


Who Made Who

by moofin_man



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Bunker Fic, Castiel and Dean's nephilim love child, Fluff, Getting Together, Hurt Castiel, Hurt Dean Winchester, Hurt/Comfort, Kid Fic, M/M, Mentions of past mpreg, Mom Castiel, Nephilim, Time Travel, dad dean winchester, slight child abuse
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-22
Updated: 2019-01-13
Packaged: 2019-06-14 07:48:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 12
Words: 21,675
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15384069
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/moofin_man/pseuds/moofin_man
Summary: Castiel and Dean have an… interesting relationship. Mostly they fight like cats and dogs and secretly pine for one another.All of that changes when their future son blows the Impala's trunk out with a time portal. All isn't fun and games though- he's back for a reason, and not a good one. Now Dean and Cas have to learn to get along and deal with their feelings in order to help their son save himself and everyone else.And maybe they can learn how to parent along the way. It should be easy, now that they have a pipsqueak badass to tie them together, right?Basically, their future kid comes back to the past and gets them to stop being idjits. Lots of fluff, angst, whump, and hurt/comfort.Updated when I feel like it.





	1. Dog Eat Dog

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cas and Dean have a domestic.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope you guys enjoy this fic! Have fun reading and please comment/kudos if you like :)
> 
> All of the titles are AC/DC songs. Cus' I have issues ;)

"CAS!"

Dean slams the medicine cabinet closed so hard that his reflection shakes. He tries his best not to snort at what he sees, he really does. Look at him now: the great Dean Winchester. He appears so worn: the harsh LED lights make his skin look like wet paper, drawing mauve shadows under his eyes where- Chuck knows- shadows aren't needed. Dean grips the edge of the sink and cracks his neck. He hasn't been out of the bunker in a week, but it feels like months. He's lucky he can remember what color the sky is. Of course, with Heaven's habit of fucking shit up, that could very well have changed. 

"What?"

Their eyes meet in the mirror before Dean registers the body heat at his back and the warm puff of breath against his ear. Even as a human, Cas can move like a ninja. A fact which only serves to further agitate the hunter's already frayed nerves. 

Dean turns to face the fallen angel, and immediately wishes he hadn't. He can feel his stomach trying to stop-drop-and-roll from the sudden wave of heat flying south. Which doesn't help the situation because Dean is already irritated.

Cas's pallid skin is steaked with pink pillow creases. His hair stands up in floppy, black waves like he just rolled out of bed. Sex-hair, Dean's mind supplies unhelpfully, before it moves on to take note of the sleep-swollen lips and bloodshot eyes.

He really wishes his brain would shut up sometimes.

Dean lifts the tube of toothpaste clenched in his fist so hard the cap looks ready to pop. "If you are going to use the toothpaste," he grinds out "then for the love of God, squeeze it from the damn end!"

Blue eyes narrow at him and the frown from being summoned so unceremoniously in the first place deepens. 

"Don't squeeze from the fucking middle or I swear-" Dean releases it to pull the tube taut and rubs it furiously over the edge of the counter, trying to coax all of the paste towards the cap -"I will fuck'n mix it with your orange juice and pour it down your throat."

He slams the toothpaste down and glares at Cas's reflection. 

The once-angel's lips are drawn back tight against his teeth with a repressed snarl. "It's toothpaste." He grits, voice even more sandpapery than normal. "What difference does it make? You don't even use it half the time."

Dean wants to put his fist through the mirror. Or Cas's face: a right hook straight into his sharp cheekbone. Maybe then, when it's very late at night and Cas sleepily smiles at him, it won't do strange things to Dean's lower gut. "What matters is that it's a rule. And you follow. The. Fuck'n. Rules."

Those blue eyes are so slitted that Dean swears they've disappeared straight into the raccoon-like circles around them. "This is because you're mad." A finger comes out of a trench coat pocket to point accusingly. "You're mad because you have been stuck here for a few days and you don't think you've accomplished anything. You're mad that you're stuck here with me-"

"Fuck, Cas. You had better learn the term fuck'n 'personal space' before I break your finger."

"You're getting 'Cabin Fever'."

Dean chucks the toothpaste at the wall. It bounces off and doesn't end up being nearly as satisfying as he had hoped. "Yes, I'm fuck'n stir-crazy! Why the hell aren't you?" He rips a hand through short, sandy blonde hair. "Fuck'n tablets. Fuck'n angels. Fuck'n demons-"

"Dean-"

"And ya know what? Fuck you and Sam and Kevin too!"

"Well maybe if you stopped being so Maudlin about it, we would actually accomplish something!"

Dean whirls and shoves Cas back into the doorway roughly. The ex-angel stumbles and grips the frame clumsily to keep from crashing. "Last time I checked, this is your goddam fault!"

"Do explain how exactly this is my f-"

"You're the one who needs a goddam babysitter 24/7! You can't leave the bunker cus' even your wing-buddies know how much of a fuck-up you turned out to be, and now they all want you dead!"

"And none of that is keeping you here!" Why don't you just leave already? Run off on another case."

"Cus' I ain't gonna be run outta my own home and someone has to make sure you don't eat something toxic on accident!"

"Then I guess you're stuck dealing with-"

There's a slam that echoes through the mausoleum-like halls. "Oh my god. Can you two shut up?" Kevin yells, appearing from around the corner. He's nursing tinfoil-wrapped leftovers and a bottle of Mountain Dew. "God, some of us are trying to work here!"

Dean looks away and takes a moment to breathe and try to control the angry, writhing fury in his gut. He thinks that if he has to spend one more minute in this place- under the ground in this catacomb- he's going to kill someone. 

At this rate, it's going to be the new and awkwardly human Cas. 

Kevin stumbles off, muttering all manner of AP-worthy insults. 

Dean blows a slow breath. He shouldn't be this wound up, and certainly shouldn't be taking it out on Cas. The poor guy is already confused and floundering. "Cas, I-" 

"Don't." The ex-angel looks at him somberly. Dean thinks back to all the things his mouth had just spewed in the heat of the moment. He pinches the bridge of his nose against the migraine coming in for a landing there. 

When he looks up again to apologize, Cas is a flutter of beige halfway down the hall as he storms off, blowing by a mildly surprised Sam. 

"Ummm…"

Dean drops his head, collapsing against the sink. He hears his brother set down the laptop and notebook he had been carting. 

"Dean…"

The older Winchester looks up, even though it takes a hell of a lot of mental strength to do so. Sam licks his lips once before grabbing his coat from the back of the couch. 

"Come on." He says. 

"We can't go anywhere Sam." Dean protests weakly, even as he's moving to go after his brother. His entire being is screaming 'yes, lets get the hell out and never look back' and he's pretty powerless against it. 

"Bullshit. No harm is going to come from being out a few hours. Just to that diner a mile away."

"Cas-"

"Kevin's taking a break, Dean. He'll make sure Cas doesn't burn the place down while we're gone. Jesus, Dean. You should have said something if you were getting so antsy."

Maybe it's the insufferable need to get out and move. Maybe it's the fight he just had with Cas. Maybe it's Sammy's puppy eyes and hopeful smile as he holds out Dean's leather jacket. 

But fuck the reason; he's going.

Dean grabs the jacket and shrugs it on over his flannel. He wonders when the hell he got so emotional. Maybe it was in the time span between when they started the apocalypse and when angels began to fall straight out of the sky. Their life is so fucked up it's almost funny.

They walk the path towards the garage in silence, Sam continuously sending worried glances like his brother is a time bomb with an unspecified explosion date. Dean almost snorts because that's such an accurate description of him.

"The diner then?" He asks once he's behind the wheel of his Baby, coaxing her to life again, just like old times.

"Yeah. Seems like a good place. You like their burgers, right?"

Dean can't help the snide upturn to his mouth. "I like everyone's burgers."

Sam clicks his tongue in that disapproving manner of his and cranks down his window to let in fresh air as they near the surface. "Such a refined pallet you have."

When Baby's tires hit the ground outside, all of the tension leaves the older hunter in a whoosh. He rolls his fingers along the steering wheel, enjoying the sense of freedom he didn't know he had missed so damn much.

"So." Sam taps his fingers.

"So?"

"So are you going to tell me why you and Cas are about to murder each other?"

Dean scowls. "Jesus, Sammy. We haven't been alone together for five minutes and you're already giving me the third degree."

It's barely a satisfying drive to the diner only three miles away from their bunker. They could have honestly walked- and sometimes they do. But Dean needed to feel his old car against the road like nothing had ever changed for a moment. Usually, the short drive is an injustice. Today, it's a blessing that Sam will have to give it a rest once they get inside.

"I'm just saying that you two are…"

"Claustrophobic?"

"… I was going to say out of the honeymoon phase."

Dean glares at the road. "How many times do I have to tell you, there's no feelings other than friendship between me and Cas. It is perfectly platonic." He ignores his brother's humored expression. "It is as heterosexual as it can possibly be!"

"Except that you're bi-"

"Don't talk about sexuality to me, Mr. I-Fucked-a-Demon."

They pull into the gravel parking lot of the diner. It's open sign in the window is like a white flag for Dean, who jumps out of the car as soon as the engine is turned off. "Dean-"

"I'm hungry. How about you, huh?"

"You can't ignore it forever."

Dean opens the door and is greeted warmly with the smell of grease and carbs. "Watch me." He grins wolfishly.


	2. Ride On

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sam and Dean have dinner. And the Impala's trunk blows up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Any ideas for the name of their kid?

Dean likes Rosie's Diner. He likes it a lot. 

Mostly because of the close distance, the slightly above average burgers, and the way that the guy at the grill wrinkles his nose at them when Sam orders a salad. 

Also because there's a silent agreement that whenever they hear the bell over the door ring as they enter, there is to be no supernatural talk whatsoever. Not even if it's raining angels outside. 

That usually leaves them sitting in silence, watching the orange and red autumn leaves fall outside. Or drawing up plans for what Cas's room should look like, since it appears that the ex-angel may be with them indefinitely. 

But since Dean thinks he would rather direct his own chick-flick than talk about Cas right now, they sit in a cloud of tension and eat their food in utter silence. It's nothing but the clank of silverware and crunch of salad. 

Sam cracks first, squirming around a little before he gulps a mouthful of water and sets his glass down hard. "Dean. Quit brooding." Sam is directing a disapproving look at his older brother, lips tight in a line. 

"I'm not brooding."

Sam gives him a bitch-face and spears a tomato off the top of his salad. "Yes, you are. Even the waitress noticed."

Which is true, the waitress had given him a strange look before passing out the menu and rushing away to another table. Dean doesn't feel like acknowledging that now though. He shrugs and busies his mouth with consuming the double cheeseburger in his hands before it drips ketchup down his wrist. 

Sam sighs. "He'd like green walls. Light olive or something. You know how much he loves gardens and the-"

"We're not gonna talk about him right now." Dean snaps. His fingers press dents into the bun as he clenches his hands. He thinks they might pierce through to the meat for a second, but they don't. "And he'd want blue, not green."

Sam smuggles his grin unsuccessfully behind another sip of water. Which is fine- not like Dean cares what that overgrown child thinks anyway. He'll let Sam draw whatever conclusions he wants, Dean is just a very good friend of the ex-angel. 

He wipes his fingers and lips of leftover grease when he's done, even though it doesn't help do much more than smear it around. "God, could you eat any slower, Samantha?" He grouses. 

"And here I thought you wanted to get out for a while." Sam spears a large strip of fried chicken and looks at it dubiously before dropping it into Dean's plate. "These people have never heard the word 'healthy'." He grumbles under his breath. 

"Yeah." Dean wipes the chicken over ketchup drippings and stuffs his cheeks full of it. "But why would I get out of one building just to go to another. I's thinking we'd go by the park."

Sam freezes, the muscles across his shoulders locking up with the fork raised to impale another leaf clump. "Dean… you know that the park is Cas's-" he stops at the look his brother throws "well… it's his favorite place. Besides the library and your room."

Dean's eyebrows dart up to his hairline at the snide comment at the end. He thinks that he should say something; put his foot down about all of Sam's matchmaking, but the younger hunter rushes on when he opens his mouth. "Are you sure that this isn't just you trying to make a stab at him?"

"How is going to the fucking park making a stab at someone?" He's starting to clench the napkins. 

"It's a stab when you know that Cas loves it, and you're going without him. It's immature, Dean!"

The older brother huffs and throws the napkins- now paper wads- down on the table and gets up. "If you want to be all mature, then I'll drop you back at the damn bunker. But I'm going." Dean realizes how much of a petulant sixteen year old he sounds like. He decides he doesn't care. "You get the bill. I'll wait in Baby."

He leaves Sam sitting at the table all alone with his sad bowl of leafy greens. His boots make dirty tracks across the scruffy, wooden floor. The bell dings louder than usual as he shoves out into the cold October air. 

It's nearly dusk; the sunset drapes long shadows and golden light over the parking lot. Dean zips up his jacket against the wind and fishes the keys from his pocket. He thinks that he'll have to drop Sam off and floor it all the way to the park. It's just his luck that Cas will probably be standing there outside the bunker when he pulls up though. 

Cas with his pouty lips and sparkly eyes. Dean wonders if everyone's crush is this simultaneously irritating and endearing. He thinks he's the only one. 

He gets in the front seat and starts up the engine so that he can turn the heat on. 

The loud, metallic bang as he does so leaves him frozen in place with his fingers on the keys. It sounds like something exploding, even as the Impala purrs to life easily. In the rear view mirror, he sees the lid of the trunk bust open and knock against the top lip a few times until it stills. 

Dean swallows and opens his door to see what it was. He hopes that it wasn't one of the weapons they have stowed in there going off on its own. He prays that it isn't anything monstrous that has decided to live in his car- he'd rather not have to rip some tentacle monster off of his Baby. 

As soon as he opens the door, it's evident that a misfire of equipment is not what happened. And Dean's heart drops to the depths of his stomach. 

There's ragged, wet, human heaving noises coming from the back. He pulls his gun, cocking it slowly as he stands. Dean's mind races through what all it could be: an angel? A demon? A witch? Something else?

A thin cloud of smoke blankets the air at the rear of the Impala. It smells like burning skin and dust. Dean adjusts his grip on the gun and slides towards it with smooth, rolling steps, elbows locked and ready to shoot. He gets to the back wheel and stops, heart hammering at the noises coming from a few feet away. Shaky gasps and gargling wheezes. By the sound of it, he'll be putting it out of its misery. 

Dean lunges around the bumper-

Crystalline blue eyes stare back at him. 

It's a kid.


	3. Nervous Shakedown

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sam is good with kids.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I promise that Dean will get more fatherly as this goes on. It's just that I don't think that he would recognize the kid as his (and he blew out the trunk, so Dean's repressing his inner mama bear ;))
> 
> I have a name in mind, but I'm still open to suggestions! 
> 
> Have fun :D

The kid stares at him for a long second. No one breathes. 

Dean has his gun pointed straight in between those aquamarine eyes, but they don't even blink. They don't even seem to be looking at the gun at all- they're focused on Dean's face, his movements like every one of them is fascinating and mildly horrifying. 

"What the fuck are you doing in my trunk?"

And still not a move is made. The kid doesn't even breathe. Dean is starting to think that it's going to become an issue if there isn't an inhale here soon. He adjusts his hands and persists. "I said: what the fuck are you do-"

It's lightning fast. The kid reaches up with one skinny, twig-like arm and twists the gun straight from the hunter's grasp. The boy tries to hold onto it, but his fingers are slicked with blood and the weapon hits the gravel a few feet from Dean. 

They both lunge. 

Dean scrambles for the gun, locks onto it and whirls back around ready to fire. "What the hell are you, huh?" 

The boy is collapsed against the side of the trunk, hands pressed to his temples as his face twists in pain. He pants a few times, spitting bloody saliva to clear his mouth. "God. God-fuck. Fuck. Sonova bitch!" His voice is a hoarse whisper as fingers curl into fists in his hair. "Goddam." Red stains mar the collar of the child's yellow tank top from where it has dripped from his nostrils and lips. There's a line of blood starting beneath the boy's freckled button nose and ending where it drops onto the shirt. The boy writhes in place, back arching, scarlet teeth clenched. "Oh god, oh god, ohgodohgodohgod-" 

"Hey, answer me! I asked you: what are you? Where did you come from?" Dean presses the gun closer and hopes that the threat it causes will snap some sense into the child. 

"Dean!" Sam breaks into a run when he sees his brother, gun aimed at an open and smoking trunk. "What- what the hell?!"

Dean thinks this must look really bad; him with a gun pointed at a bloodied and poorly-dressed child. He knows that they should get out of here as fast as possible, before some Good Samaritan calls the cops on them. 

"Wha-what… who is that?!" 

"I- I don't know! I started the car and this thing blew out the back!" 

"Dean-" Sam grabs his brother's wrist and yanks it down "quit- put the gun down before someone sees you pointing it at a twelve year old!"

The boy is ignoring them in favor of holding his head and cussing up a storm. "Shit- shit! Never do'in that again. Never, never ever ever do'in that again." He kicks his heel weakly against the trunk bed. 

"Hey-" Sam starts forwards. Dean grabs his sleeve to hold him in place. 

"What do you think you're doing?" 

Sam looks back and forth between his brother and the wriggling child. "He's a kid, Dean."

"So was Lilith! He could be dangerous!"

"He's in pain. Does he look like a threat to you?"

Dean doesn't think so, not really, but all of the evils began as a child once. "That kid was just birthed out of a cloud of smoke in the trunk of my Baby!"

"And so far, that's all he's done! Wait until he smokes up the asthma-section of a hospital before you gank him." Sam wrenches his sleeve away with a bitch-face. "Hey. Kiddo. Are you okay?" He takes a few tentative steps, slow and easy as to not scare the boy. 

What's strange is that the child doesn't seem to object to Sam getting close at all. He welcomes it, in fact, cracking open a watery, bloodshot eye to hazily stare at the brothers and lets the tension drain from his lithe body. Sam gets closer, and without an adverse reaction, he crouches in the dusty gravel. 

Dean pulls the gun to his stomach as to conceal it and glances around the otherwise empty lot. There are a few cars other than Baby, but so far, no one has come out of the restaurant. Dean isn't sure how long that luck will hold. They need to leave. 

"Hey, hey. You're alright. Look at me. Can you look at me?" The single eye has been carefully trained on Dean the whole time, despite Sam getting closer and closer. It finally slides to the younger Winchester, who smiles kindly in return. "There ya go. See? I'm not going to hurt you. What's your name?"

That startles the kid, who opens the other eye to stare at Sam, then at Dean. Those blue orbs scan over the hunters' faces with a terrified frenzy. He apparently doesn't find what he's looking for, because the boy's face then crumples pathetically and he lets out a choked sob. Dean doesn't understand why that question would warrant tears and a melt-down, so he stands there feeling horrible about the gun he has aimed at the little, trembling ball in his trunk. 

He's saved by the sound of a truck rumbling up the road. It's a long way off, but a good reminder that they need to move. "We need to go." He snaps. "Here, get him in the back seat." Dean reaches up to grab the lid of the trunk. 

There's a shaky gasp and a pant for air before the kid has composed himself again. He tries to lick some of the blood from his lips, but only ends up smearing it around. He nods carefully and winces. "I- I can't…" the boy's voice is rough like a smoker's "move very fast." He clenches his jaw and tries not to look at either of them. "Fuck'n head's been road-hauled." He slowly and shakily pushes himself up and drops one leg down to the ground outside. His bare toes wiggle on the sharp gravel. The kid is trying hard- that much is clear. He scrubs at his eyes with a trembling fist and braces himself on the car to set his other foot down. All legs, the kid is apparently- for what little height he amounts to. He's made of sticks; knobby knees and slim hips even though he still has baby fat on his cheeks. Sam's right, he doesn't look threatening at all with a mop of soft, unruly blonde hair and a smattering of freckles on his nose and elbows. He's also not in anything but boxers. 

Dean raises an eyebrow. "Your pants get road-hauled off ya too?" He drawls. 

The boy scowls at him with squinted eyes like Cas does. "No. 'Scuse me, I was a little rushed this morning."

"Don't be giving me lip, boy. I'm the one with the gun here."

The way the boy looks at him makes Dean's stomach churn uncomfortably. He can see the pain in that expression, and it's so much deeper than a headache. The boy blinks it away quickly and gives a wet-sounding snort. "Can see tha-" When he tries to stand on his own, the shakes overtake him and he does down. It's Sam who swoops in, catching the boy against his chest and arms and cradling him there. 

The kid groans, eyes rolling back. He melts into Sam's hold like that's what he'd been waiting for the whole time. Dean thinks it's sickeningly sweet, the sight of his brother holding a little boy like it's his own. 

"Dean." Sam grunts. "A little help? I think he's passed out." 

Dean shifts his hold on the gun to one-handed and helps his brother gather all the gangly limbs. They cast the comatose boy into the back seat of the Impala, and Sam climbs in next to him. The inside is warm from the heaters, but the younger hunter takes his coat off to drape over the child's bare legs anyway. 

"He's so cold." Sam marvels as they pull onto the main road. The younger brother tries to clean up the blood as best he can; some of it has already dried in place. "Where are we taking him?"

Dean revs the engine. "The bunker. We can put him in a cell until he wakes up and tells us where the hell he came from." He tries not to look at the little bundle sleeping peacefully in the back seat. It does strange things to his stomach. 

Sam sighs like he doesn't feel right about doing that, but knows it's for the best. He brushes some of the sandy locks from the boy's eyes and scoots the jacket down to cover the blue-with-cold-toes. The turn for the bunker is in sight, a little break in the tree line barely noticeable. Dean swerves into it hard, tires crunching over dead leaves. "Well, shit."

Outside the cement bunker entrance stands Cas, his trench coat flapping in the breeze. His nose is pink from the biting breeze, hair tousled more than usual. Dean wonders if he's been standing there since the Winchesters left. The irritated scowl on his face says 'yes'. Especially the way it deepens as Dean floors it right on past the ex-angel. 

"Uh- Dean! What are you doing? Cas is-"

"We need to get that kid inside. Cas can catch up." The finality in his tone shuts Sam up as the oldest steers his car towards the garage entrance. "Now lets see if that kid's a monster or not." If the boy is of supernatural origin, as Dean thinks, he'll be knocked straight back. He parks the Impala and gets out, opening the door for Sam to lift the boy. 

"Why can't we just go in through the front entrance and get the car later?" The younger Winchester whines. 

"Because I don't fuck'n feel like it." His brother growls and slams the door. "Ready?" He looks pointedly at the sigil painted on the floor in Cas's angel-blood a few feet away, marking the outer ring of protective traps. 

Sam shifts a little. "I don't think he's a monster, Dean."

Dean rubs a hand over his face. He really hopes that they can get this over with before Cas stomps all the way over and demands to know why they're carrying a comatose child. They're not going to if Sam doesn't shut up and do it. 

"Here." Dean holds out his arms. "You don't wanna do it, fine. I will."

Sam clutches the kid tighter to his chest. "No. I've got it." He steps towards the symbol and stops, the tops of his boots just inches away. He looks back at his brother once more. "I'm telling you, Dean. He's not a monster. Monsters don't cry like that."

Dean thinks his brother is stupid. They've both seen demons sob and vampires break down. He supposes it's Sam's bleeding heart for the Little Guy, but that's what Dean likes about his little brother: he's ever-hopeful.

Sam steps over the sigil.


	4. Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cas's man-period and Dean's uncanny ability to make situations worse.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Final call for name ideas!
> 
> Do you guys think that Cas should recognize his child (from the future. Even though he's never met him) or not? Comment to let me know :)

Nothing happens for a beat. Then two. 

Sam lets out a sharp breath and looks down at the boy in his arms with a small smile. "Not a monster." He murmurs. The kid blows a bloody snot-bubble in response. 

"Great. Now we can interrogate the munchkin." Dean claps his hands together. He gets a bitch-face for his comment. 

"We are not interrogating him." Sam insists, tossing the boy up a little to get a better grip on the skinny body. 

"Well then what do you suggest we-"

"Dean! Sam!" Cas's enraged voice echoes across the empty plane of grass around the bunker. They can hear him stomping closer. Every noise the ex-angel makes is harsh and angry like uncut amethyst. It means that Dean is in for one hell of a chewing out. 

"Oh shit. Oh shit, man. Cas is going to blow a fuse when he sees the kid!" Dean rips his hands through his sandy blonde hair and paces a few steps. He can already feel his skin beginning to flush. 

The younger brother rolls his eyes and sighs. "I'm sure he'll be fine." Sam reasons, logical as ever. "If we just explain-"

"I am not explaining the sudden appearance of a bloody child to a fallen angel!" Dean whisper-shouts harshly. He flings out a hand to point at the incoming sound of Hurricane Castiel, en route to them now. "Especially not when he's on his man-period." The look Sam gives him is full of disgust, with a wrinkled nose and down-turned lips. 

"Dude, I'm telling you, Cas is just-"

"DEAN!" The enraged roars of an ignored ex-angel are closer. Dean wishes that thought didn't do as strange of things to his stomach as it does. He thrusts out his arms to his little brother. 

"Here. Give me the kid. I'll take him to one of the cells, you distract Cas." 

Sam shies away, drawing the child up close to himself. "Nu-uh, Dean. You tried to shoot the little guy! And you shouldn't hide things from Cas- Team Free Will, remember?"

Dean makes an impatient growl in the back of his throat. The footsteps are getting closer; dress shoes on dying autumn grass, the swish of poplin fabric. "Please, Sam! Just until tomorrow; he's so pissed off today already. He won't want the kid in the bunker." Dean feels as if he and Sam are ten years old again, trying to hide a dog that Sammy had found from their Dad. The younger Winchester's amber eyes flutter from the child in his arms, to his brother, to the stomping getting closer and closer. Dean can't explain the sudden anxiety in his chest, but it's twisting a knot into his sternum. 

Sam finally relents. "Fine." He grits out, and extends the sleeping boy, placing him with upmost care into Dean's arms. "I'll keep Cas busy. Be gentle with him!" But the older brother has already taken off toward the garage side entrance, typing in his password and opening the door. It's only when it is safely closed that he feels like he can breathe. He lets out a sharp breath now he's inside and out of the immediate danger posed by an angry Castiel. 

"Phew. You're one lucky son of a bitch, you know that? Just dodged a freak'n bullet with wings." He tells the kid. The only response he gets is a muffled snore. 

Carrying a child is much harder than Dean had expected. The one in his arms is long past the normal carrying age, at least by a few years. He's not heavy, by any means, but his limbs are willowy and keep wanting to drag. The kid is a sprawler, that's for sure. He's like a floppy pillow: not fat, but so, so soft. And fragile. Dean hasn't held anything so fragile since Sammy was this age. In the quiet of the bunker's halls, he lets himself marvel at the bird-bones the boy has; his floppy hair as soft as corn silks. The boy murmurs a little and- to Dean's surprise- nuzzles deeper into the hunter's hold, rubbing his cheek like a cat against the flannel and blowing another red snot-bubble. 

The hunter can almost forgive the blowing-up he did to Baby. Almost. 

Dean takes the child deep underground, to the containment cells that The Men of Letters had installed for any foe that they may need to restrain. He thinks that the original members would have never thought it would one day be used as a makeshift daycare. They certainly didn't design it to be kid-friendly; lots of concrete and shadows. They milked the 'Torture Dungeon' vibe for all that it's worth. 

When they get to the first cell, Dean thinks that this might be a bad idea for the first time. The room is damp and cold and unused. An empty cell block without so much as a bed, just a single, swinging light from the ceiling and a rusty drain in the floor. 

The boy in his arms huffs and twitches. Dean wonders how long he has before the child wakes. He pulls his phone from his pocket, shifting the limp body to one arm and dials up his brother. No one answers. 

"Damn it." He growls. He can feel the clock ticking down to the boy coming around again. He doesn't have time to fully furnish the room as a luxury suite. Dean sets the child down gently in the center of the room, somewhat away from the drain, which reeks of a drowning death and mold. The boy shivers as his back is pressed against the cold floor. 

It makes Dean's stomach do strange things when he stands, to see that helpless child laid bare in the middle of a cell. He tucks his jacket and flannel, as well as Sam's, around the boy's shivering form. 

"Nnngh." The kid rolls his head, eyelids fluttering. Dean panics, back pedaling to his escape and shuts the large, iron door behind him. He tries to console himself with the thought that he didn't turn the lights out on the child. It doesn't seem to help ease his conscience. 

Dean will admit that he scampered as fast as he possibly could to get out of the bowels of the bunker. He runs into his brother outside the library. 

"Fuck'n answer your phone once in a while, Princess!" He growls, stopping Sam with a hand to his chest. 

"Well excuse me, I was busy distracting a rampaging Cas! Is the kid okay? Did he wake up?"

"Yeah. He's fine; in the second cell. Starting to wake up when I left him." Dean swallows down the vice in his throat. "How's Cas?"

Sam huffs a laugh. "He's in a good mood now. I suggested that we look into setting up some Langstroth Hives out in the field. Those are artificial bee hives, by the way. He's real pumped about it; didn't even ask where my coat was when we walked out there."

Dean raises an eyebrow. "Oh?" He chances a quick peek around his brother's massive frame and into the library. He can't see Cas through the door, but the lights are onto the 'warm glow' setting the fallen angel enjoys so much. "Think it's safe for me to go in?"

Sam shrugs. "I guess. You two seem pretty volatile lately, though." He sends a quick bitch-face at that, before smoothing his hair back with a sigh. "I'm assuming that you just left the boy in there and didn't give him anything."

"What would I give him? He slapped a gun out of my hand, I'm not supplying him with the means to pick his lock."

The younger brother rolls his eyes. "I don't know, can you pick a lock with a blanket and a pillow, Dean?"

The older hunter slaps his brother upside the head. "He'll be fine. It's just a few hours- until tomorrow. Leave him some water if you feel that bad." Dean hopes that Sam leaves the child water. 

Cas is sitting curled beneath a fluffy throw when Dean slips into the library. He'd hoped to do it quietly, but the smell of old books made him sneeze. The ex-angel turns to look at him with a somber expression, lips pressed in a tight line. 

"…Hello, Dean." He says softly after a beat. He's pressed securely into a corner of the couch, looking small and unassuming. Dean thinks it's funny that he's just left someone with those exact same watery, blue eyes. 

"Hey Cas." Dean flops onto the couch beside his angel- no. Not his angel, dammit- beside Cas, close enough to touch, but they don't. "Listen…" the hunter rubs the back of his neck. "I'm sorry about earlier, okay?"

Cas doesn't say anything, but puts down his book. 

"I'm just… we're all on edge here. It's starting to really get to me." He huffs a laugh. "And you're… you do things that get on my nerves- would get on anyone's nerves."

Cas frowns. "Sam and Kevin do not seem to be so bothered."

Dean doesn't think Cas would understand or appreciate a joke on being 'hot and bothered'. Which Dean is not, by the way. He sucks in his bottom lip thoughtfully instead. "No, no. You're right. It's just… you're an easy target. 'Cus you're so new and bad at being human."

Dean realizes this has been a very, very bad idea. By the pull of Cas's lips and the squinted glare, the fallen angel realizes this too. "I believe you are- as Sam would say- 'putting your foot in your mouth'." Cas reopens his book. "Perhaps we should simply sit here."

"Yeah." Dean agrees quickly. "That-that sounds good." He pushes himself back into the other corner over the oversized couch and lays down with a grunt. His toes end up a few inches from Cas's thigh. "Lets just sit here."


	5. Spoil'n for a Fight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cas has an identity crisis and Dean feels like an idjit.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was going to introduce Cas to their kid in this chapter, but it kinda got away from me. 
> 
> So I guess that'll just wait until next time :)
> 
> Any ideas for how you guys think things should go down, hit me up in the comments!

Dean wakes up to a warm, fuzzy blanket over him and cold toes. His eyes are a little bleary and puffy from sleeping surrounded in dusty, allergen-ridden books. It takes longer than usual for him to figure out that it is, in fact, Cas's olive green throw blanket tucked daintily in around him. It's not long enough to cover his toes, so they've been left to blue in the cool bunker air. 

The fallen angel himself, however, has disappeared. Luckily, Cas is not a hard man to find. All that Dean has to do is follow the trail: an empty hot cocoa mug on a desk, one black dress shoe in the hall, followed by another one a few yards away, the book on bees lying face down in the kitchen. 

Which is where Sam happens to be, chopping potatoes. He looks up at his brother when Dean stumbles in, squints, then goes back to dicing. 

"What?" Dean grouses. He tugs on the fridge door and picks his way to some leftovers on their last legs. 

Sam shrugs and tosses his hair. "I didn't say anything."

The leftovers don't smell horribly rancid, so Dean begins to poke at the soggy taco shell. He wonders if it will stay in one piece if he lifts it out. "No, but your squinty little bitch-face did, Samantha. Spill."

Sam rolls his eyes, aggressively snapping his knife down on an unassuming potato. "'S noth'n. It's just that Cas wandered in here 'bout an hour ago looking a little…" he gestures limply with one hand "disoriented."

"He's always disoriented." Dean points out. 

"But then you wander in here with some crazy sex-hair and Cas's favorite blanket."

Dean narrows his eyes to slits. He knows it probably doesn't have the same effect as when Cas does it, but he's seen it enough to know how to do a fairly good copy. "So what you're trying to say is that you think Cas and I were having make-up sex in the library all night." Dean thinks that the idea of that is preposterous, but his dick seems to have other plans. 

He tries not to imagine it: Cas's pale pink lips under his, opening up and letting him into that wet heat. The scruff of his growing five o' clock shadow against Dean's cheeks and… other places. Dean being the first one- Cas's first, and that means he'd still be so tight and hot because Chuck knows that guy would be wound up tight as a-

"Hey, Dean. You okay?" Sam waves a hand in front of his brother's face. "You know I was joking, right?"

The older hunter blinks. Again, he had really tried not to think about it. "Yeah. I'm fine." He clears his throat and focuses very hard on the soggy taco. "Where's Cas now?"

"He's outside, I think. Said something about raking."

Dean's stomach does that strange thing again. 

"I'm making soup for lunch. See if we can get that kid to talk if we feed him something."

Dean had forgotten about the child. And now he feels bad about it; you would think he'd have remembered something like that. But he had been so distracted with Cas and that it is perfectly normal and platonic to think about your friends like that, that it had slipped from his mind like wet sand. 

"Is he awake yet?" Dean is going to pretend that he'd been thinking of the kid, and that was why he was wondering where Cas was. 

"Not that I've seen him." Sam scrapes the cutting board full of potato squares into a boiling pot. "I left him some water last night and an apple. When I checked on him this morning, he was asleep, but the water was gone and he was curled in the corner."

"That's… weird. Think he'd be trying to be awake as much as possible; make sure we weren't gonna do nothing bad to him."

Sam shrugs. "He was out cold yesterday. Probably still sleeping it off. But Dean-" the younger Winchester plucks the tinfoil-wrapped taco from his brother's hands. "First of all, don't eat that." He dumps it in the trash. "Second of all, we have to tell Cas. You promised we would do it today."

"I never promised anything."

"No, but you're a man of your word. If you don't tell him, then I will. A cell in the basement is no place for a kid." Sam stirs his bubbling soup. Steam wafts up, making Dean's stomach rumble. 

"…Fine. Need to go check on my Baby anyway." He grabs a pop tart on the way out.

When Dean gets to the garage, he's surprised to find Cas already there at the trunk of the Impala, looking in with a worried expression. The ex-angel takes several steps away from the car when he sees Dean coming towards him, cheeks bloated with pop tarts. "Dean, half of your trunk is missing."

The hunter rolls his eyes. "Yeah." He uses the pop tarts as an excuse not to elaborate. A tactic that Cas sees right through. The fallen angel comes forwards again and runs his fingers gently over the singed bottom. 

"Oh, fuck'n great." The trunk has been thoroughly burned out, the scent of smoke still clinging faintly. While the carpeting had been a charcoal color before, it is now a deep, black. The false bottom: little more than tissue paper. Not to sell the miracles here short, though: a few inches deeper and a number of monster-killing weapons would have gone off as well. Dean tests the hinges of the lid and pokes the busted locking mechanism. He's very aware that Cas is watching his every move. 

"Dean, what happened here?"

The hunter tries to get the trunk to stay closed, but the lid keeps popping back up. He'll have to fix it before he can take his Baby out again. 

"Dean."

Cas is starting to sound impatient, so the hunter sighs and looks away from the burned mess. "Yesterday, Sam and I went out to get something to eat. Just to Rosie's a few miles away." He runs a hand over the crumbly burns, fingers coming away with soot. "I went to start the car when we were going to leave, and all of a sudden, the back blew out."

"The… back blew out?"

"Yeah. Just… ka-POW."

"Is that… they do not normally do that. Maybe it's… time for a new car?"

Dean curls his lip and stares at the other man for a long second. Every moment of silence that passes, Cas looks more and more like he's regretting saying that. 

"What the hell, man. No, I'll sooner take Sam to the dump than my Baby." He shakes his head. "The point is, it wasn't the car. I went to the back to check and…" he licks his lips a little. "There was this kid. Sitting in my trunk."

Cas stares, expressionless. "A kid. A… child? A human child?"

"Yep. A human. Just sitt'n there."

"In the trunk."

"Yeah. In the trunk."

Cas looks at the rear of the car with a pinch in his face. "Some human children are rather fond of explosions and fireworks…" he muses aloud. 

"Huh? No, I mean he was sitting there-" Dean gestures wildly to the burns "in the middle of all of this. With a bloody nose and a migraine."

Cas's eyes narrow to slits. "That sounds like something you and Sam would read about online and then go across the country to investigate. You're sure he was human?"

Dean sighs. "Yes, okay? He made it past the warding. He's human." He can't help but flinch a little when the fallen angel's head shoots up. 

"You brought him here?" There's a dark undertone to his voice. A promise of violence if Dean does not explain his actions very carefully and logically. "You didn't tell me?"

"Yeah we brought him here. He was born out of my trunk for god's sake! What was I supposed to do, just leave him there?"

"No, you were supposed to call me, and tell me that your car birthed a human child! And then we're supposed to figure out what to do together. We are a team, it's what we do!"

Dean throws up his hands. "You were madder than a bull, man! I wasn't going to call you and go 'hey, Cas, we picked up Eleven from 'Stranger Things' so stow your crap for now, 'cus we have this to deal with on top of everything else'!" Dean needs to throw something. He slams the lid of the trunk instead. 

Cas's chin tilts down to deepen his glare. "You seem to underestimate me, Dean. I have lived for millennia. I can 'stow my crap' if need be!"

"This isn't about tha-"

"Yes it is!" Cas's voice echoes, suddenly loud enough to make the hunter flinch. "It's about you thinking that because I'm not an angel anymore, then I can't do things! You think that I am incapacitated; useless and weak!" He looks scared, Dean thinks, as well as angry. "And you didn't think that I would like to know about it! You deliberately hid this! What happened to Team Free Will? Does losing my Grace make me no longer part of the team?!" The fallen angel stands there, tense and heaving. His eyes search Dean's, looking desperately for an answer. "Am I… just a tool?" He looks so small, like that kid in the basement. 

"No! Of course not, Cas. Sam and I ain't angels either, and look at us." Dean wonders how long his angel has been bottling all this up. Probably since he fell. 

"You can say that, Dean." Cas licks his lips, cracked from the yelling and the dry bunker air. His voice is quieter now- he's not shouting but he's still angry. "Yet your actions continue to prove otherwise."

Dean feels as if he has been hit in the stomach with a bowling ball. He wonders how he could have been so stupid. He had taken for granted Cas's seemingly unwavering emotions as an angel. He hadn't thought that would change as the seraph fell. 

Dean thinks that not everyone must be so dense when it comes to their best friend. It's probably a Winchester thing. 

The ex-angel lets a sigh pass through his lips. His shoulders slump and he rubs his knuckles across Baby's taillight, almost as an apology for suggesting the explosion was her fault. "It doesn't matter." He sounds a little bitter. "There's a child to attend to."

The tone of his voice makes the hunter shrivel a bit on the inside. "Wait, Cas, I-"

"Dean," a sharp look "that is enough." So Dean's not going to push. 

He nods numbly. "Yeah… yeah, okay." His feet stay rooted to the spot as his angel- damn, not his- the angel begins to walk away. He feels like the Ass-of-the-Year. 

"Are you coming or not?" Of course, Cas is standing there like Dean hasn't screwed him over time and time again. "I do not know where you put the child. You'll have to show me."

The hunter swallows the extra-thick lump in his throat. "Yeah, we'll get Sam and go see the kid." He follows the fallen seraph out of the garage.


	6. Shake Your Foundations

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dean handcuffs a small child, Sam can't say no to the kid, and Cas gets parental.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let me know in the comments what you guys thought. 
> 
> Also, if you want to see any side pairings then let me know and I can work them in. I'm not sure if the kid should have cousins or not yet, so any feedback is helpful!
> 
> Thanks for reading ;)

"Sam, what the fuck?!"

Dean is frozen in the kitchen doorway. 

"Okay, I know what this looks like, but I swear it wasn't me." Sam raises his hands in surrender. And Dean has eyes, alright? It sure as hell looks like it was Sam. Especially since he's the one still holding a spoon covered in slowly melting chocolate ice cream and an open bag of gummy bears. 

Seated on the counter facing Sam is the boy, wrapped up in a fuzzy green blanket and cradling a bowl gently in his hands. 

The kid retracts the bowl from where he'd had it stretched out to receive the candy with a frown. He turns to Dean, eyebrows raised. "Hey." His voice is just as gruff as the day before. Dean hopes that's not what it always is; he sounds like a smoker. 

Dean ignores him. "How is this not your fault?" He snaps at his brother, waving his arms in the vicinity of the little child. 

"I didn't let him out! He just walked in here a few minutes ago and asked if we had pie."

The boy shoves some ice cream into his mouth, surprisingly careful not to get any on the blanket. "Which you do," he says around the spoon "but apparently you don't share. Which is the dumbest thing I've ever heard." He shifts and holds out a hand for Sam to give him gummy bears. "Who the hell doesn't share their pie with their- with a kid?"

"Me, that's who." Dean growls. "Who the hell let you out?"

"I let myself out." The boy shrugs, and the blanket around his shoulders slips a little, baring even more freckles across his back. 

"Bullshit." Dean makes his way towards the kid, who just shrugs again and makes grabby hands at the gummies. "What's bullshit is your 'no pie' rule." He grumbles. And proceeds to dump nearly half of the bag into his bowl of ice cream. Dean wonders if all children are this irritating. Maybe it's just because this one blew up Baby's trunk. 

"All right, that's enough you two." Sam referees, taking back the candy before the boy can empty the entire thing. "Where's Cas?" He asks his brother. 

Dean rolls his eyes. "The bathroom. He somehow forgot he had to piss earlier."

The boy's brow furrows. "How the hell do you forget to pee? That doesn't sound normal at all." 

"Well, it's a good thing no one asked you, kiddo."

"Fuck you, old man. What the hell is your problem with-"

Sam has to physically step between them. "Enough." He commands, sending his brother a patented bitch-face. "You," he points at the kid with the spoon "were going to tell me your name."

The kid snorts. "No I wasn't. You, however, were going to let me have some chocolate sauce for this ice cream." 

"You do realize that's 'Death-by-Chocolate', right? You don't actually want to die, do you?"

Dean has reached his limit with this; his heart's already had one roller coaster for today, and thoughts of a certain fallen seraph are still twisting around in his stomach. He doesn't have time to babysit and deal with another problem, he has too many to count already. So Dean has had fuck'n enough with this short little bastard. 

He grabs the bowl from the kid in one swift motion, and chucks it clear across the room. It shatters into pieces against the far wall, drowning out Sam's dismayed cry. The next moment, the older hunter has the child's shirt clenched in his fists. He drags the boy close to his face. Dean's usually much more mannered than this, but hell if this punk-ass bitch didn't smelt the back of his Baby and doesn't look like Cas. 

What he didn't expect, was the kid's tiny fist to connect with his nose before he could utter a single threat. It snaps his head back with a pop, and the boy wriggles out of his grasp. He slides to the floor like a slimy little worm and takes off across the tiles. 

The kid doesn't get very far. Dean lunges and hooks him by a fragile ankle. "Get back here, you little-" a heel pounds at his face. A surprisingly high-pitched shriek permeates the air. 

But Dean isn't letting go. 

He drags the bony menace backwards, sliding him on his belly as he claws at the ground. Dean locks the angel-cuffs from his belt around the thrashing foot. "What the hell? Kinky bastard! Let me go!" And with a grunt, the hunter connects the other cuff to a stainless steel leg of the kitchen island. 

And then Dean scrambles as far away from those flying feet as he possibly can. "Oooh god. Little shit broke my nose!" He cups his hands around the assaulted area. 

"What the hell, Dean!" Sam barks.

The kid, for once, is silent. He sits there with huge eyes locked on them both and a heaving chest. And Dean thinks, in that moment, he looks scared and betrayed and utterly crushed. He draws himself up and curls around the leg, snagging the blanket that dropped. The next time Dean glares, all that he can see is a head of shiny blonde hair and crisp, blue eyes. 

Staring at him like he's a fuck'n monster for this. 

Sam flies to the child, probably to see if he's alright. He draws up short at the horrid flinch it causes. The younger hunter sighs and directs another bitch-face at his brother, backing up. "Here, god. You're such a baby." Sam grumbles, grabbing the tub of ice cream and passing it to his brother. Dean holds it to his nose where he can feel it beginning to swell. "Oh, and by the way, don't fucking do that to a kid!"

"He fuck'n asked for it!" But it's starting to churn Dean's gut the longer he tries to glare at the boy. The kid looks one hundred percent miserable for some reason. Then again, it's probably the angel-cuffs. 

"Hey, kiddo-" a sniffle cuts him off. The eyes disappear. 

Sam ruffles a hand through his hair. "Look at what you've done." He bitches at Dean. 

Which is the moment that Cas decides to waltz in. "Dean, the sink is full of toilet paper and I can't turn the water-" He freezes mid step. "What happened?" A cold fury takes over his eyes. Dean swears those are the same fuck'n eyes that just vanished into the green blanket. The boy flinches like he wants to burrow into the floor and die there. 

"Dean the Kid-Whisperer just handcuffed a child." Sam gripes. 

"He punched me!"

"You've been punched before! Get over it."

Cas creeps towards them to get a look at the child. He appears mildly surprised and uncomfortable about the sight of the tiny ball hugging a leg of the kitchen island. After a moment, he sends Dean a disappointed look. 

The hunter's lip twitches in a snarl beneath the ice cream tub. He's already stressed enough without his crus- best friend judging him. 

Cas gets to his knees before the kid, making to touch the child, then aborts the gesture. It's awkward and obvious that Cas has never been around a child before; especially not an emotional one. He clears his throat. "Umm… hello?" There's a slight moment. Towards the ex-angel, and not away so that must be good. Cas sends a panicked look to the brothers. 

"Oh look, Cas is better than you are at this." Sam snipes. 

"Dude, shut up."

"I'm just saying, maybe you could learn a thing or two about being human from him."

Dean is going to reply, but stops when there's a move from the kid. The little boy shuffles beneath Cas's blanket, then peeks his head up and stares at the ex-angel with huge, cobalt puppy eyes. 

Cas looks startled: he looks floored. He freezes, staring at the child with his eyebrows drawn in confusion. The little boy stares back. 

No one blinks for the longest damn second of Dean's life. 

"Drux-Med-Don-Teh-Pah." Cas searches the child's eyes. "Pa-Val-Teh-Mal-Gesh-Don." Its Enochian. Dean didn't even know the guy remembered how to speak it. 

Cas doesn't look at either of the hunters, and neither of them try to break whatever spell has come over their fallen angel. But Dean would really like to know what the fuck is going on. He feels like he's watching something very intimate, and it's starting to make him squirm- maybe they know each other?

The kid hiccups a little. "M-mal…" he licks his lips. "Van… P-pal…" a cold feeling swoops through Dean's veins. An angel. He let a fucking angel into the bunker. "Val-Un-Gr…graph-Gon-Nuh. Or-Fa…fam-Med." But how did he get past the warding? And why the hell isn't he trying to rip Cas's lungs out through his ass?

Whatever the little boy tells Cas, it makes the fallen seraph go ridged. "Gisg-Van-Pal?" It comes out terse. A scowl starts to pull on his lips. 

"Val-Don-Ged." A whimper. The child hangs his head, covering his face in a curtain of blonde bangs. The ex-angel stares with a dumbstruck expression as the kid continues to mutter in stumbling Enochian. Or, Dean assumes it's Enochian anyway; it sounds like a stream of panicked noises now. 

"Uh…" Dean hates to break whatever this is up, but he's not fond of being left in the dark. He's ignored until the kid scrambles a little more towards the ex-seraph and the angel-cuffs around his ankle clink with the movement. Dean can see the moment Castiel catches sight of them, his eyes narrow into slits the width of a paper cut. And then he whips to Dean. 

The hunter has seen his angel angry before, but this? This is a new kind of fury; it's blazing and hot. It's not Cas; it's Castiel. It makes Dean's stomach go belly-up with fear, and at the same time, turn him on more than it should. What did you do?" The furious words are stifled by clenched teeth. 

Dean gapes for a few seconds like a fish. "He- he punched me-"

"Unlock him." And that's the voice that made mountains crack and the ground tremble. 

Sam rubs at his nose. "Cas, I'm not sure that's-"

"He's not a damn animal. Unlock. Him. Now."

Sam raises his hands in surrender. 

Dean glares from beneath the ice cream container pressed to the bridge of his nose. "Wait a goddam second!" He points to the kid. "What the hell is he? An angel?"

"That is none of your-" Cas pauses and sucks in his bottom lip for a brief pause "none of your concern at the moment."

"The hell it is, he could pose a threat-"

"He isn't a threat!" Cas looks like a cornered animal, teeth bared savagely.

Dean snorts. "You don't even know, do you? He sure as hell ain't an angel, but he speaks fluent God-speak. He fuck'n blew-"

Sam finally snaps. "Yes, we get it, okay? He blew up your trunk. You've built that car from the ground up before, nothing you can't fix."

"Why aren't you more freaked about that? My car up and shit out a kid, and you're standing here like that's a regular Tuesday for you. Which, it's not, by the way. We've faced down seductive demons and Satan himself, but never has a kid exploded his way out of my car's ass!" Dean chucks the ice cream and scrambles off the floor. "And now he speaks Feather-Talk? And got out of a monster-proof cell on his own?"

The kid snaps his head up. "I'm not a freak! I'm not a threat! And I have fuck'n ears. Quit talking about me like I'm not here!"

"This isn't a democracy, kiddo. And if it were, you wouldn't get a vote. As far as we know, you're a monster."

Which doesn't just hit a nerve, it stabs it with a cattle prod. The kid looks at him with a horrified expression and those glittering eyes. "I… I'm not… you said I wasn't…" he sucks his bottom lip in and looks to Cas like he may save him. 

Sam sighs. "Look," he says tiredly. "If you just tell us what and who you are, then we can let you loose and everything'll be fine."

But the boy shakes his head hard. He looks at Dean. "You're gonna think I'm nuts." Then he tilts his head at Cas. "And you might try to kill me."

The oldest hunter cracks his knuckles menacingly. "How about we take the 'might' out of that sentence and get it over with now?" He growls. 

"Dean!" His brother barks. 

Cas reaches out a tentative hand and lays it gently on the boy's shoulder. The kid flinches a little, before looking at the angel, eyes wide. "Please." Cas begs. "You said that you were a refugee. That you're from a different time because your own is not safe." Which explains the fiery portal in Dean's trunk. "You must have come here for a reason. If we can help-"

"Woah, wait. Another time? Like…" Sam scans the boy, sitting there in a pool of green fabric, wearing nothing but a pair of black boxers and a thin, yellow wife-beater decorated in a faded image of a smiling bee. "The… future?"

The boy flinches. "Yeah." He confirms quietly. "Can't be too far though." His eyebrows draw together and he looks over at the fallen angel sitting beside him. "You're human aren't you? Which makes this… twenty-thirteen? Fourteen?" He ignores Cas's questioning look. "So about fifteen or so years. I didn't mean to come back this far. We just needed a few years."

"How the hell do you know about Cas?" Dean demands. 

The boy shrugs. "Cus' I'm from your future."

Dean almost chokes on 'your future'. Honestly, he didn't think he had much of a chance at one. "My future?" He echoes flatly. 

The boy bobs his head. "Yup. But the way you say it makes it sound kinda dumb."

"Cas?" Sam asks suddenly. "Are you okay?" Which, when Dean looks over, he thinks that was a stupid question; the fallen angel is suddenly very not okay. His eyes are so wide, they risk falling out of his skull at this rate. His chest heaves quickly beneath his white button-up. The guy honestly looks like a jump-scared cat. He stares at the child. 

"You…" he also appears nauseous. "Oh god." He claps a hand over his mouth and swallows hard. The boy shrinks beneath the blue-eyed gaze. Cas clears his throat roughly. "Solth-Ror-Tah-Veh." He stutters a bit, something Dean has never seen him do to his native language. "Soba-Uns-Ta. Sol-Veh-Nad-Isro-Mad-Drux."

The boy nods, unable to look at any of them, his shoulders slumped in resignation. Cas gets to his feet shakily. He's still staring at the boy. His face grows more and more horrified each passing second. 

"Cas? Are you okay-" When the fallen angel looks at Dean, it's an exact replica of his expression when he told the hunter he wanted to stay in purgatory. Dean's stomach drops down to the floor. 

Cas is gone in a flurry of panic and beige poplin.


	7. Beating Around the Bush

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cas tells the truth.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You guys want Sabriel in this?  
> Let me know what you think in the comments.

Kevin looks at Dean with the bitch-face he's perfected by spending too much time around Sam. The kind that says he knows Dean has something to do with Cas sprinting to the bathroom and retching for ten minutes. To be fair, he's more often than not the cause of Cas's emotional abuse, but this time is different. 

"Cas?" Dean knocks on the bathroom door lightly and tries the handle. There's a painful sounding retch from inside, echoing in the toilet bowl the ex-angel is probably bent over. "Cas, are you okay in there?" 

Soft pants are heard through the door, but no more vomiting. "Jesus, what did you guys do this time, feed him Coke and Mentos?" Kevin gripes. 

"No. Shut up, Kevin. Go… do calculations or whatever your job is." Dean snaps. He tries the handle again, even though he knows it's not going to budge. "Cas, open the door!" He can imagine the fallen seraph in there, bowed over the porcelain throne and shaking with his first ever up-chucking. It's not every day you have your first multi-colored yawn. Dean can't help but feel like he should be in there, holding the trench coat and draping a cool cloth over the back of Cas's neck. And demanding to know what the fuck the kid said. "Cas, man. Come on, let me in."

There's a miserable sounding "No!" 

"Cas, I swear to fuck, I will pick the lock right this goddam second if you don't open the door."

Kevin sighs like Dean is a complete idiot and shoulders him aside. The geeky high schooler takes the handle from the hunter and gives it a little shake. "Hey, Cas. It's Kevin." He sends Dean a look. "Let me come in, man. I promise Dean's gonna stay out here, but you really shouldn't be alone for this. You could mess up your lungs." Which Dean supposes is a good point; Cas has never thrown up before and tends to try and not let his body do natural things. 

There's a long silence. They wait, soft breaths sounding particularly loud in the empty hallway. "…Dean's not coming in?" It sounds weak. The hunter can't tell if it's hopeful or sad. 

"Yeah," Kevin adjusts his grip on the door. "He's gonna stay out here. Not sure we can get him to leave or anything, but he's not coming in. Unless you want him of course." 

Dean tries not to be insulted. But to be honest, he wouldn't want Cas to see him heaving wheaties either. They wait anxiously for an answer. There's a shuffle, and finally the lock clicks. Kevin jerks his hand away from the knob so that the fallen angel can crack the door of his own volition. 

One clear blue eye peeks out. "Just Kevin." And Jesus, does his voice sound completely wrecked. Dean tries to get a better look at the guy, but when Cas pulls the door back for the prophet to enter, he slides completely from view. 

"I got this. Go." Kevin tells the hunter and nods at the kitchen. And then the door is shut in his face. Dean thinks that he probably should have protested to being locked out. He should have kicked the door in while it was open and demanded that Cas tell him what the fuck is happening. 

But… never mind. Dean can't deal with the feels right now; he hasn't been up for more than an hour. And being with his vomiting angel crush will certainly pull a few heartstrings. Dean shakes his head in a huff, and heads back to the kitchen. He tries not to flinch at another round of violent retching that sounds after him. 

"Hey, is Cas okay?" Sam asks, meeting his brother at the door. His eyebrows are drawn up in the 'worried puppy' expression he has sometimes. 

Dean blows past him. "If having your first vomit-session is okay, then yeah. He's peachy." He stops before the kid, still wrapped around the kitchen island, and looking a little guilty. He doesn't meet the hunter's eyes, just hides behind a veil of blonde bangs. 

"Sorry." The kid mumbles, staring at Dean's boots rather than his glare. He tries to make himself small, drawing up like a pill bug. 

"Alright," the hunter crosses his arms over his chest. "You'd better start talk'n. Whatever you said to get the freaking 'Angel of the Lord' to spew chunks needs to come out. In English this time; I don't speak bird."

The boy rubs a hand over his hair. "Heh, I really don't think that's a good idea if it got… the other guy to toss his cookies."

"Oh nu-uh, Doc Brown. You ain't gett'n out of it that easy."

Sam comes to his brother's side. "Look, okay. Maybe we should start off with something easy." He gives Dean a look of 'shut your pie-hole'. "What are you?"

The boy snorts. "If you think that one's easy, I'd hate to see what you think is hard." But his voice is unsteady and rough. 

Sam presses his lips together. "Okay then. What's your name?"

The boy looks nervous. His eyes go to Dean. Then roam over the floor for a moment. He wants to tell them -that much is obvious- but he holds his tongue for some reason. 

"C'mon." Sam encourages gently. He gets to the floor and sits with his legs in a pretzel so he's not towering so much. "You said we know each other in the future right?"

The kid glances at him. "You could say that, yeah." He mumbles. Dean knows there's something he's not telling them. He wonders if they're enemies or something. 

"Well then, what do we call you?"

The boy squirms like he's sitting on a hot coal. "Um… well, when we go- well, not we. When I go- I um…"

Dean groans. "God, this isn't unmedicated dental surgery! Just give Sammy something to call you other than 'Kid'."

The child wriggles a little more like has to piss. Dean briefly wonders if he does. "You know what? We should probably wait for uh… Cas to come back. He might wanna be the one to explain it." The boy babbles nervously. 

The hunter rolls his eyes. "Whatever." He crosses to the fridge and gets out a beer. Sam sends him a look that means 'it's too early for that' but Dean thinks that the situation calls for it. "How old are you, anyway?" 

"Thirteen."

Dean spits the mouthful of booze back into the bottle. "No fuck'n way, man." He wipes his hand over his mouth to catch the stray drops. "You look like you're frigg'n nine."

The boy draws up and glares. "I'm a late bloomer, is all." He snaps. 

Sam chuckles nervously. He's sending all sorts of non-verbal messages to his brother about not starting a fight. "Yeah? Me too. And so was Dean, but he doesn't like to talk about it." Which gets a small twitch of the lips from the boy. 

There's a thump out in the hall that makes Dean jerk. Another bang- this time closer- and in shuffles a disoriented looking Cas. 

For a second, Dean's brain short circuits. Kevin- the mischievous bastard- has gone and gotten the fallen angel a new shirt to wear, seeing as he probably got sick all over the old one. Now Cas is wearing Dean's favorite tee: High Voltage AC/DC. The one Sammy got him for his sixteenth birthday; long since worn into softness. It matches Cas's eyes with eerie precision. Dean can't help but wonder what it would be like to wake up next to the seraph wearing that every morning. 

But then he's thrown back into reality. Cas can't meet his eyes for some reason, he hangs his head like a kicked dog. 

"Hey. You feeling better?" Sam asks. He seems to be the only one that Cas can even glance at. 

The ex-angel nods and shuffles further into the room. "Cas?" Dean asks. It sure as hell doesn't seem like the guy is doing any better. 

The fallen seraph flinches a little and raises his head slowly. His eyes dart to the child and he takes a deep breath. "Eol." He says. It's full of faux courage. 

The boy jerks a little. And then a whisper of a smile graces his mouth. "Avavago." He replies. 

Cas looks a little stunned, a blush creeping over his neck. He tries for a watery smile before he breathes and looks at the hunters. The only thing that Dean can think of when the fallen angel meets his eyes, is that Cas looks sad. He looks like he's sorry for something, but Dean can't imagine what for. "I… I must apologize." He stammers. He turns to the boy. "It… I wasn't expecting that and my vess- well, my body, I suppose, it… I'm not sure why it-"

The kid looks startled. He jolts and waves his hands to stop the guy. "No, no, no! I understand, I promise. It's fine. Not personal really; I'm a stranger to you." Dean's not sure why any of that would matter. "It's just…" he sighs, freckled shoulders slumping "there are so many other ways I wish this had gone."

"Wait, okay what?" Dean demands to know. He looks between Cas and the boy like he's watching a tennis match. They both have the expression of being caught with a hand in the cookie jar. 

Cas clears his throat. "Dean…." He says carefully. "This… this boy traveled back in time from the future, as you know." He looks like he's going to faint if he has to keep going. 

"Yeah? And?"

"He… well…" Cas looks at the ceiling, the the wall, then over to Sam and finally to the boy. He still won't look at Dean. 

The kid is the one who decides to pull the trigger. He takes a deep breath. "I'm a Nephilim." 

Nephilim.

Dean… has no idea what the fuck a Nephilim is, but it just sounds like the monster lottery. And by the way Cas looks like he's waiting for the hunter to snap and throw something, it can't be good. So, Dean is just going to pretend he knows what the hell a Nephilim is for now. 

Sam gasps, all that studying he does finally paying off. "A… you mean…" Sam looks panicked. "An angel baby?"

"Half angel." The boy tells him. 

Dean's heart stutters to a standstill. There aren't any words forming in his mind as to explain the emotional wave that just crashed into him, but somewhere in him, he knows. He looks at the boy and he can tell: the kid is Cas's.

Sam appears more and more freaked out. He studies the kid with his roaming brown eyes before he looks to the fallen seraph. "Oh my god. He's yours isn't he?" He asks Cas. Which makes Dean's heart plummet to heat the words out loud. He wonders who the lucky lady is that he'll have to put a bullet through before she gets in his angel's pants. Now that Dean is looking though, he can see how the boy really does look like Cas: the broad face, the same blue eyes, the nose…. There's parts of the mom in there too, whoever she is. Light blonde hair, a long mouth, and freckles. 

The fallen angel bites his lip and nods. "He's mine. Mine and…" he pauses. "Well… it's actually rather… um you see…" his face is flushing. Dean wonders if it's Meg; it could be by how nervous the fallen angel is. He doesn't remember Meg having freckles though. And he would rather not imagine the sassy demon and his angel in bed together.

Cas sighs defeatedly. "So… angels are genderless. Up in heaven, at least. Of course you see me as strictly male." He gestures to his body. "Because of Jimmy, but in reality I am both and neither." He looks at the child. "So, hypothetically… I am able to both father and mother depending on how the intercourse took place. My vessel would respond accordingly; most likely gaining sympathy weight for the mother, or… growing a uterus and infant."

The boy shifts and leans his temple on the leg of the island. His eyes flutter closed. "You had me." He says quietly. "I'm smaller because your vessel could only grow a uterus so big. It was a c-section." Dean feels his stomach do a little flip at the idea of having to deal with a moody and pregnant Cas in the future. His guts twinge in sympathy at how painful it must be for the body to completely reject its natural ways like that. 

And then it hits him like a semi truck: Cas is not the father in this situation. Which means that whoever he gets freaky with is. Which means that Cas takes a tumble in the sheets with a dude. "So?" He asks. "Who is it? Who's the dad?"

Cas looks away. "Dean…" he swallows. Dean can't help but think that whoever it is, Cas is really blowing this out of proportion. He wishes the ex-angel would pull the trigger already. "It's… its you."


	8. Cold Hearted Man

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dean flips shit. So does Junior. Cas is about to just curl up on the floor and cry.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (Wedding March plays in the background) If anyone has reason that this fic should not include Sabriel, speak now or forever hold your peace. 
> 
> So… the kid is gonna get a name eventually. He'll have one by the time this is over, at least ;)
> 
> Comment your opinions/ideas!

The idea is so fuck'n absurd, that Dean can't help the laugh that works it's way up his throat and makes Cas flinch like a beaten animal. "That's not possible." He can feel himself smiling like the Joker because it's just so damn impossible. 

"Um. Yes, I just explained-"

"No, I mean… there are so many reasons I can't be the dad. For one: I'm a frigg'n hunter. I don't… I'd accidentally kill the kid. Second, you and me? It's totally platonic."

Which makes Cas flinch a little again. Dean wishes he would stop doing that; he doesn't know how to feel about a Castiel who's vulnerable and scared. They're supposed to keep each other strong, it's how things work. 

"Dean…" Sam whispers. "Look at him. He's got your mouth and your hair and freckles."

Dean scoffs, even as his heart picks up a beat or two. "Yeah? Claire Novak has blonde hair and a smart mouth too."

"Dean." Enter the bitch-face. 

"What makes you think he's mine, anyway?" His voice is pitching into hysterics. A tight coil of dread tightens in his chest. Because what if it is his kid? He's still doesn't know how to hug the fallen angel- let alone impregnate him. 

"Well he looks exactly like you and Cas, for one thing!" Sam waves his hand at the kid. 

"So? That means jack shit, Sammy, and you know it!"

Which is when Cas crumples like candy wrapper. He drops so heavily against the counter, it makes the cabinet doors bang. "Stop." He gasps, clutching his temples. "Just- just stop." Like the arguing causes him actual pain. 

"No, dammit!" Dean slams his beer down on the counter and whirls on the boy. "You have no right, do you hear me? No right to come in here and just claim that you're some freak'n mutant love-child from the future!" He doesn't remember stomping closer, but here he is, inches from the kid and staring down at him. 

The boy stands, coming up to all of his 48 inches. "Well guess what, it's what I am!" He stabs a finger into the hunter's chest. "I'm a freaky, mutant abomination- so sue me, right? I didn't ask to be born. And guess what: I'm yours. Your freaky, mutant abomination. So get used to it!" The kid's eyes are blazing with a cold fury. And Dean takes a step back, because if he squints then he really can see himself- and Cas- growling back at him. "Or are you still repressing your sexuality?" His glare dares Dean to defy him. 

"I'm not repressing anything! And you're not mine! You're not my responsibility; not my problem; not my kid!" The hunter roars. Before he can think of what he's doing, his hands are on the kid's sharp collar bones, shoving him back. Cas lets a dismayed cry and lunges. 

Except, the kid isn't the one that moves: Dean is. A wave of milky blue light hits the hunter like a truck and swipes him off of his feet. He clatters back into the poor cabinets, knocking the wind out of his lungs and smashing the wood paneling in one fell swoop. It takes him a moment to draw another staggering breath, his brother racing to his side. 

"Dean! Are you alright?" Sam jerks at the older hunter's shoulder. Dean blinks a few times and coughs. He nods and bats away the nervous hands as the world blends back into focus. What the hell is this kid? He's never seen an angel pull any Susan Storm shit before. 

Behind Sam, he can see Cas and the boy. Matching sets of horrified blue eyes staring at him. "I- I- I… I didn't…" the child fists Cas's shirt in a subconscious way, "I didn't mean to. He…" 

Dean doesn't know if Cas is aware that he does it, but he reaches out and draws the child in closer to himself, like he's making a human shield. Castiel being the only thing between the kid and Dean. And that makes Dean's stomach drop like a rock. He could tell himself that Cas is protecting him from the child that just threw him back without lifting a finger. But the motherly curl of the fallen seraph's body says otherwise. 

He doesn't know why, but that curdles his gut with panic. Pure, animalistic fear. The air in the room is suddenly thick and hot against his skin, and- oh god, what if he is the father? What is this nightmare version of Jerry Springer that he's been dumped into? Dean can't be a dad; what the hell was Chuck thinking?!

"Dean-" he scrambles for the keys to the cuffs. His hands are shaking the whole time, breaths coming too fast and short to get any real air in his lungs. As soon as the keys are in his grasp, he throws them like they're hot coals over to Cas. 

And then he runs. 

He fuck'n sprints out of there so fast, his shoes probably left streaks on the floor.

And he doesn't look back.


	9. Hell Ain't a Bad Place to be

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cas is having a crisis. And the kid finally gets a name ;)
> 
> A Cas POV.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, surprise surprise, I took everyone's wonderful name suggestions (thank you for all of those btw) and… made my own. 
> 
> Don't be sad though, since the courts have ruled in favor of Sabriel, their kids have to have names as well. I'm thinking I'll actually use some of the suggestions for those;)
> 
> Do you guys want to see any particular characters (Jody, Claire, Charlie, Garth…) in this? Let me know in the comments and thanks for reading!

There's no words to describe how raw Cas feels. It's like nothing he's ever experienced in his eons of existence. 

There's a deep, insistent, throbbing pain in the center of his chest. He wonders for a moment if he's dying. Then he realizes that's just the feeling one gets when they're looked at the way that Dean has just looked at him. 

That Dean is so utterly disgusted by him and what they eventually do: create an abomination together. 

Hand in hand, bodies together they will one day work. Side by side, on top of and in each other, and the product of their labors will be something that not even God can stand. 

Not that Cas is going to give a damn about what the old man thinks of his sexual relations. He shouldn't, he knows he shouldn't. But it's millennia of brain-washing verses a single pin prick of free will. 

The Nephilim flinches from his own father as Dean races from the room and the keys to the angel cuffs hit the side of Cas's shoe. He stares at them dumbly for far too long to be normal. 

His head is pounding. Words of the argument are still bouncing around in there: not my responsibility; not my problem; not my kid. And those words had hurt- physically- like a sharp blow to his gut. Because the child is theirs. His and Dean's. And there's no way that Dean can possibly comprehend the transgressions being committed by creating a Nephilim, so that leaves Cas. Castiel is the one that he can't stand, that he can't fathom ever loving at all, let alone enough to create new life with. 

It's wrong, so utterly wrong. Learning of his son should be a joy; he should be celebrating. Cas has always thought that the creation of life was a beautiful thing. There's nothing more wonderful than new and pure life, after all. He had always known, of course, that he could never partake. He is- was- an angel.

Look at how the galaxies are laughing at him now. 

He thinks he's going to be sick again. 

The Nephilim pulls back from Cas's protection. He turns his large, watery eyes onto the fallen seraph. "I- I'm sorry. It's a reflex. I can't really-"

"It's fine. It's fine." Cas murmurs. He collapses into a bar stool, his legs no longer able to keep him up. 

Sam grabs his coat from the counter. "I'll get him." He says, taking off at a jog after his brother. "Dean!"

The fallen seraph buries his head in his hands and tries to breathe through the thick panic and self-loathing in his chest. He hopes Sam can't find his brother. He hopes he never has to look at Dean again. If not for his sanity, then for the hunter's. 

"I'm sorry." The Nephilim whispers plaintively. 

Which makes Cas feel even worse. Because no, the Nephilim did not ask to be created. "It's not your fault." The fallen angel manages. 

The Nephilim crouches to pick up the key and unlock himself. "Heh. I mean, it kinda is." He says. The lock clicks open and he removes the shackle from his bony ankle. 

Cas looks at the abomination. He sees Dean staring back at him. With the sandy blonde hair and the gently sun-freckled skin, and the full, red lips. Beyond that as well though: a tense line to his shoulders, a glint of mischief, danger and willpower in his gaze. 

"You look like him." Cas's voice breaks halfway through and he hates himself for it. 

But it makes the Nephilim smirk. The kind that Dean gives him around a beer when Cas says something that could be taken as a sex joke and thinks the fallen angel doesn't know about it. "Yeah? I've been told I look like you."

Cas flinches again. He wishes he could stop doing that. But the Nephilim doesn't seem to mind. He picks up the green blanket from the floor and drapes it over his bare shoulders like a cape. "Well, you if you had blonde hair and lips like a hooker." The Nephilim trots over to the fridge and opens it up. He surveys the contents with a hum. 

When he returns to the kitchen island, he has a jar of Sam's special peanut butter and a beer which he slides over to Cas. "You look like you could use one."

The ex-angel stares at it. "Do I drink a lot?" He feels like an amnesiac, asking questions he probably doesn't want to know the answer to. 

The Nephilim shrugs and picks up a spoon left abandoned on the island. He licks the pool of chocolate out of the scoop end and digs it into the jar. "I mean, Dad drinks. You do too, but I think you just do it 'cus he likes to. It's not like you can get drunk." The child stirs the peanut butter until it's too thick and his grip slips. "In case you haven't noticed, you do get your Grace back. I'm not a complete primate."

Cas eyes the boy as he lifts the spoon up and catches the extra dribbles of peanut butter with his tongue. "Yes. I suppose that's something." He mumbles to himself. 

Cas opens the beer. It smells faintly of alcohol. Which in turn smells like Dean. He doesn't know if he can swallow it, but he raises the bottle to his lips and focuses on the burn that rises in the back of his throat. 

"Ya know." The Nephilim is peering ahead with slitted eyes. "I think I've officially ruined my chances of ever getting to work on Baby."

Cas blinks. Oh yes, the car. "I'm sorry. This must all be very strange to you." He hears himself saying. 

The Nephilim shrugs like it doesn't really bother him. The fallen angel knows it does though. "It's pretty weird. You guys have no idea who the fuck I am. It's like you're different people." He shoves a spoonful of peanut butter into his mouth. 

"I've seen many things, in my time. Parenthood certainly changes people."

"I guess it does. You smile a lot more in the future." 

Cas doesn't have an answer for that. He wonders if this has ruined his chances at having happy future with Dean. He doesn't see how the hunter can love him after this. 

Suddenly, the Nephilim stabs his spoon into the peanut butter jar and turns to the fallen angel nursing a beer next to him. He pushes back the blanket so that Cas can see all of him: the faded yellow tank top with a bee, the baggy black boxers, the thin limbs, and the obscene amount of freckles. He sticks out his hand. "My name is Boamiel James Winchester. People call me Bo. But since you're technically my mom, you call me Bee. And you're the only one who gets to."

Cas feels his mouth stretch into a teary smile. He gently takes the Nephilim's- no. Bee. He takes Bee's hand and inwardly marvels at how tiny it is, how soft. "Hello, Bee. My name is Castiel." He gives a small shake to the hand. "I… I am your mother."

Bee grins, all teeth and dimples. "Baba." He says. "I call you Baba."

Cas swallows hard. There's something bubbling up in his chest that isn't misery and loathing. He's not sure quite what it is though; hasn't been human long enough to be able to pin it down. "Alright then," he chews his lip. "Baba." It tastes bittersweet on his tongue. "I'm Baba."


	10. Riff Raff

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sam knocks some sense into Dean.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Real life actually required my attention for a few days guys, sorry! Also sorry that Bo and Cas aren't in this chapter (thought it was important for Dean to get his shit together first). But they'll be in the next one ;D
> 
> So, do you guys think that Bo's cousins (Jack and various unnamed Sabriel children) should also join the fun? Let me know in the comments. 
> 
> Have fun reading!

This is what it must feel like to drown, Dean realizes. Every pore clogged with panic; his train of thought just beating itself into a wall over and over again. The only thing he can clearly think is the word 'son' as his mind tests it out, exploring what it might mean, all of the strings that come with it. 

He's so fucked. 

Sam pushes through the door to the garage. "Dean!"

He's not hard to find, really. He hadn't exactly tried to hide. He's sitting in the front seat of his Baby hands on the wheel and ready to roll on out like a tumbleweed. His head is aching and his chest is heavy with an animalistic panic and the need to Get-the-Hell-Out. Which is the moment that Sam decides to make himself into a human blockade. 

"Shit!" Dean stomps on the breaks so hard they squeal, able to think lucidly enough for a moment to be grateful that the fear is priming his reflexes. "What the fuck are you doing? Get outta the way!" The only reason his voice is steady is because he's yelling. He's drowning in his own emotional soup, so far under he can barely breathe. 

"Dean, where the hell do you think you're going?!" Sam has his arms and legs splayed like a 6'4 starfish. "You can't leave!" He looks desperate, Dean thinks. He wonders what all Sam has riding on this; if he really wants to be an uncle and a brother-in-law that bad. 

"That's exactly what I'm going to do. Get outta the way or get run over!"

"Stop, please don't do this. You're going to regret leaving so much."

"The hell I will! Move it or lose it, Sammy!"

Sam sucks on his bottom lip and makes puppy eyes for a moment. Then he drops his arms, reaches into his waistband, and pulls out his .45. Dean doesn't have the time to scream like a little girl before his brother is firing shots. He can feel the back of his car get significantly lower than the front with a jolt that shakes his mirrors and two explosions. 

He gets out and races to the back. "You fucker! You shot out my tires?" They were new too. Dean decides that this whole day has been complete shit. 

Sam doesn't even have the dignity to appear remorseful. "Well now you aren't going anywhere." He sneers. "Except for back inside. To your man and your son. Both of which, you have been a major dick to."

Dean kicks the rim of his now flattened tires. His steel toed boots protect him from a broken toe with his hard he hits. The panic isn't easing away as much as it's getting mixed with other feelings. He remains a toxic mess of emotions either way. "Dammit, Sam. I told you already, that is not my-"

"No. No, he is. No matter how much you try to deny it. That is your son in there. Yours and Cas's."

Dean takes a few shaky breaths. His heart is beating too fast, his throat is closing up. He doesn't know why he's panicking so much over this- it doesn't make any sense. None of it does, really. Why would an angel choose him as a partner? As a… mate? He, who has done so much wrong. He beats his fist into the singed trunk lid and rips a hand through his hair. "Do you…" his voice is hoarse and whispery "do you have any idea how… how wrong that is?" The moment it leaves his mouth, he regrets it. 

Sam's face curls. "Wrong?" He looks disgusted. "Do you even hear yourself sometimes? Dean, two people loving each other can never be wrong. If this is some repressed homophobia-"

"No, okay? Wrong isn't what I wanted to say."

"Dean, I don't understand." His brother sighs. His shoulders slump like he's dealt with the older Winchester's shit far too many times. "Look, I get that it's a shock. I mean, yeah. I'm an uncle. Which is pretty freaky. But… why are you so against this? This should be good news. I know that you have a thing for Cas, and this means that someday, you two do get a happy ending."

"Sam!" Dean's so frustrated. The words won't come out right; there's no way for him to communicate what exactly he's feeling. Right now it's a jumbled mess. All he can think of is that this is the exact reason as to why he doesn't do chick-flick moments. "I'm not- I can't be a dad." It sounds garbled, and hurts the whole way out. "I can't be a husband."

"And why not? Why wouldn't you deserve that?" Sam tilts his head like a puppy. 

Dean stares at his little brother. "Have you lost your fuck'n mind, dude? Look at us! Look at me! Fucking up is practically my job, I'm not gonna drag Cas and some poor kid down with me!"

"So… you're scared?"

"The hell did you get that from? No. What I'm saying is…" Dean sighs. "I…" he swallows and rubs at his pounding temple. If he isn't yelling, he thinks he may start crying. "I… care. About Cas. Too much to yank him straight to hell with me. I can't do that to him."

"You're scared."

"Fuck it, Dr. Phil. Are you even listening?"

"Yeah, I'm listening." Sam folds his arms over his chest. "And what I'm hearing is that you're terrified of the commitment and love and responsibility."

"Why the hell am I even arguing with you? You've obviously already made up your mind."

"And so had you! You were getting ready to leave, and look at where we are now."

"Yeah. You shot my fuck'n tires out!"

Sam's fist comes up, quick as lightning, and socks him right in the face. Dean can feel his brother's knuckles pop when they connect to his cheekbone. He can hear his teeth clatter together from the force as he reels back. "Fuck!"

"What do I have to do to knock some sense into you, huh?" Sam is standing there heaving, wringing out his fist. Dean hopes he has one hell of a bruise there in the morning. He hopes he can't type with that hand for a week. 

"Why do you care so fuck'n much anyway?!" The older hunter shrieks. He thinks this is too much. He can't do this. "It's not your fuck'n future; why do you care at all?"

"Is it unreasonable to want to see you happy?" Sam roars. 

Dean doesn't know why, but at that response, every muscle in his body coils and he pounces onto his brother. They go down hard, Sam beneath him and suddenly throwing punches and kicks like an animal as Dean knocks him a good three times in the nose until it's spurting blood. 

They haven't fought like this since John pit them against each other growing up. They haven't dirt-tangoed so dirty without one of them being possessed in decades. And Dean has no idea why they're fighting now, or what for. He can hardly hold a thought long enough for it to flesh out into something more than 'run' or 'hide' or 'fight' or 'son'. 

Sam uses his daddy-long-legs to twist his brother into a pretzel and get on top. Dean hooks his grip around the younger hunter's giraffe neck and squeezes until they're both blue in the face. It's a shock that none of the weapons they have come into play as they struggle and writhe on the concrete in a haze of blood and fury. 

Bone cracks against the floor, nails dig into flesh to find purchase there. Teeth come out too, eventually, raking long bloody gashes that will sting like a bitch in the morning. They tumble over each other, clawing for the upper hand. Dean doesn't know how long it lasts for. It's a wonder Cas or Kevin don't wander in, looking for the source of all the screaming and cussing. 

Eventually, it's Sam who stays on top, pinning his brother's wrists to the cold ground as Dean bares his teeth and howls. There's blood smeared over both of them, sweat climbing into places that chafe. And tears. Dean doesn't know when he started crying, but he can feel them: hot, salty bastards as they roll from the corners of his eyes. 

"Breathe." Its choked, because Dean still has a hand pressing Sam's windpipe. "You gotta- breathe. Dean. Breathe."

Sam's right, he's not breathing. There's no burn to his lungs, but he's still not breathing. He opens his mouth and gapes like a fish, but his lungs won't work. A hand releases his wrist to thump his breastbone. "Breathe!"

He takes in a loud, gasping breath, chest expanding. Sam holds him tight until he's panting and blinking hard. "Get- get the fuck off me."

Fingers tighten around his wrist. "You- you gonna h-hit me?" Breathy-sounding, so the older hunter releases his throat. 

Dean shakes his head. "Nah. We- we're done."

"You gonna-" Sam cuts off to bark out a cough. "You gonna run?"

Dean closes his eyes and feels the grittiness there. He shakes his head again. "Nah."

"Mmkay." Sam rolls off of him. He goes limp like a rag doll, splayed out in a streak of blood they've left. They lay side by side and stare at the ceiling. 

"Feel better?" Sam asks. 

"Yeah. Kinda." He can hear his heartbeat. It's loud. He wonders if his brother can hear it too. He wonders if Cas- when he still had his angel mojo- could hear it. 

"You know we gotta go back in there, right? You acted like a total dick."

"Yeah. I know."

"And I'm not dragging your ass back, okay? You gotta walk on your own."

Dean rubs the salt from his eyes, the corners feeling raw. His body aches. But at least he can think straight now. "Can we just… stay here? For a sec?"

He can hear the swish of Sam's hair when he nods. "That sounds good." He sighs. "Lets… we'll go back in in a minute."


	11. Sin City

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dean sucks at apologizing and Cas is a sexy drunk.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ah fuck me. I've been bitch-slapped by life for like two weeks. I'm sorry this is extremely late and not coherent at fuck'n all. 
> 
> Do you guys think that Bo should or should not have a slightly malicious agenda for coming back in time? Let me know in the comments :)

Cas is in the library. And Dean can't make himself go in for some god forsaken reason. 

It's not like it's hard, he's done so much harder, so much worse. But it's Cas. And it becomes apparent that Dean has never really taken the time to actually apologize to the guy before now. 

Now, when Sam is beside him wearing a vicious bitch-face and Dean is more in a stupor than anything else; standing by sheer force of will, propping his worn, exhausted body against the wall. He doesn't understand why this is so draining. It's just Cas. And yet, Dean's never been more mentally and emotionally exhausted.

Now that his mind isn't trapped in a relentless loop of torment, he can recognize what an ass he'd been. To someone he cares about no less. He wants to beat his face into the wall- did he really just blurt such horrible things to a kid? His angel's kid, no less. And Cas was standing right there and heard all of it and must think that Dean hates him. He feels like such a fuck-up. 

Sam reaches over his brother's limp doll of a body and knocks on the door. The hunter reacts a second too late, striking out at Sam's bruised wrist. "Sam!" It comes out as a hiccup, because Dean doesn't feel ready for this at all. He wants to sleep first. 

"Dean, just go in. He's not gonna shoot you or anything. You screwed up, just apologize so we can all move on."

But Cas will turn on those huge, glossy blue eyes and wordlessly ask 'why' and Dean isn't man enough for that. If Cas shot him, it would be a blessing. 

"Dean, just- get in there!" The door isn't locked when the younger brother turns the handle and shoves it open. 

Cas is settled loosely on the couch, looking sprawled as if he's just dropped from a skyscraper and landed like that. The lights are on warm glow, there's at least four bottles of beer, and he's staring at a blank spot on the wall. It reminds the hunter of the Stoner-Castiel he'd met in the apocalypse world. 

Dean has never felt more like shit. He's driven an angel to intoxication. 

Cas's eyes flick to them. For a moment, his expression is naked and raw and hurt. And then it seals off like a mask, emotionless. That's the thing about Cas, he's always wearing so many layers. There are so many pieces to him and they're all scattered like broken glass. Dean doubts he's seen all of them- even if he ever will. He wonders who's there at the center. 

"I'm going to go make sure your kid doesn't break something important." Sam announces. He's giving his older brother so many non verbal directions on what to do,but Dean can't understand a single one. He pretends the words 'your kid' don't drop like a stone in his guts.

Cas blinks long and slow as Sam leaves them. Dean doesn't move from the doorway. "Hey, Cas."

"…Hello, Dean."

They stare at each other for a long second. Dean's mind is twisting itself up in knots trying to figure out what to say next. He thinks that he's never been at such a loss for words with the fallen seraph before- even when he was lusting from across the room and Cas was being unintentionally sexy. 

It's beer that saves the day. "I think I understand…" Cas says very slowly. "Why you enjoy this drink so much. It is… very pleasant." He's not slurring, but he sure ain't legal to drive. The hunter should come back later, when the fallen angel is nice and lucid. 

"Um. Yeah. It's good."

There's a thick silence. Dean wants to melt into the floorboards. Cas blinks. "Are you here to apologize?" 

Dean thinks it's probably not worth it- Cas could very well not remember this at all come tomorrow. "Yeah." The words slip out before he can stop them. He nods stiffly. 

"That's good."

"Yeah." Dean pulls himself forwards, feet like cinder blocks. He feels ready to collapse right there on the floor and sleep this whole crisis off. He really doesn't want to beat himself up with an awesome apology and have his angel be black-out drunk for the whole thing. "Can I sit?" Dean thinks he likes ignoring his blunders much more than he does meeting them head on. 

Cas nods slowly. After a few seconds, he rolls to one end, movements dull and slow. 

Dean throws himself into the cushions next to the fallen seraph like a dead weight. "Any beer left in these?" He knocks gently against one of the bottles. 

Cas drags his eyes over the small collection he has going. It takes a long time to shrug a non-answer. 

Dean knows that he should probably just leave- dude's already plastered and Dean is tired as fuck. He lifts up the bottles to check their contents by weight. Those on the coffee table are empty- all five of them- but there's an unopened one rolled halfway beneath the couch. "How wasted are you?" Dean asks as he pops the cap. He wonders why he's staying. 

Cas scrunches his face up. "I am… moderately inebriated. Sober enough to appreciate an apology, if that's what you're worried about."

The hunter can't help the snort that forces out of his bruised nose. He can feel them slowly sliding back into their old groove, and maybe, he thinks, this won't be so bad. The ex-angel isn't treating him like he's too far in the doghouse. "Good. I was real concerned." He's going out on a very unstable limb here. Maybe if he just pretends that nothing-

"That is sarcasm."

"Yes, it was."

"I am too intoxicated for that. You should leave."

"No-" Dean sighs. Fuck, he's not good at this. "Wait. I'm sorry." The monumental words slipped out. And it wasn't as awesome and chick-flick as Dean had been going for- more of a limp prod at an apology than anything else. He thinks that only he has the ability to fuck shit up this bad and fast. 

Cas narrows his eyes. "You should elaborate."

Dean chuckles bitterly. "You want me to get on my knees and detail how I fucked up?" Because by God, he'll do it, if that's what it takes. 

"That would help."

"I'm sorry. I screwed up." Dean takes a courage-swig of his beer. "I shouldn't have- I was a dick." He can't look at the fallen seraph right now. He stares straight ahead stiffly. "To you and the kid- Nephilim- I shouldn't have done that. I shouldn't have called him a freak or a monster. He's …" Dean swallows thickly "he's my…. He's yours." If he thinks of the boy as strictly Cas's, then it doesn't hurt so much.

Cas is looking only mildly interested in what Dean is saying. "… you shouldn't have." He echoes lifelessly. The hunter can't tell if any of the words are being comprehended or not. Maybe they're just falling out of his friend's ears as soon as they enter. He should really leave. 

Dean hangs his head and huffs a laugh. "I can't even really remember what I said. I was so…" 

"So what?" When the hunter looks over, Cas is staring at him with watery blue eyes. The guy may be plastered to hell and back, but he's looking at Dean like he's the only thing that matters. It's like flicking an overused lighter in the hunter's lower gut. 

Dean swallows. "Scared." If he pretends that this doesn't freak the shit out of him, then Cas won't notice. "I was- am- scared. I fight demons and werewolves and this is terrifying me. How fuck'n lame is that?"

"Not very." Cas makes a weak grab at one of the beer bottles. "I am millennia older than you, and I'm frightened as well."

Dean snorts, not unkindly he hopes. "What do you have to be afraid of here?" Even though the answer to that is glaring him in the face: new humanity, unknown emotions, a forbidden child, mounting responsibilities. The hunter selfishly wants to hear that his problems aren't the biggest ones out there, though. 

Cas finally locks onto the bottle and frowns when he realizes it's empty. "Loving you, Dean Winchester." He announces, waving the bottle like a white flag. 

Dean chokes. All of his organs constrict. "What?"

"I… may be more than slightly intoxicated." The fallen seraph frowns. He doesn't repeat what he said; he doesn't need to. 

The hunter snaps his jaw shut from where it had fallen slack. "Dude. You're so drunk right now." Cas is just a lovable drunk, that's all. And Dean ain't gonna put too much stock in the shit-faced ramblings of a depressed angel. The rest of his apology will have to wait, he supposes. 

"Yes I thought I told you that already." It's the first hint of emotion: irritation. 

"You did."

"Then maybe this should wait until I'm sober."

"Yeah…" Dean pauses. One look at the glazed eyes of Cas, and he has a new mission. The hunter pushes himself off the soft fabric of the cushions and onto stiff legs. "I'm gonna get some Johnson Brothers. Can't let you have a hangover by yourself in the morning."

"Maybe one of us should stay lucid. There is the child to look after now." Cas calls as Dean wanders off to his emergency booze stash. He can't help but snort: only Castiel can get completely sloshed and still worry over the details. 

"I ain't gonna kid anyone. With us as parents, Marty McFly has probably seen his fair share of drunks." Aha, an unopened bottle. The hunter drags it back to the couch and his angel. 

"Bee."

"Huh?" Dean already has the cap off. He doesn't even wince at the nail polish remover smell anymore. 

Cas sits up with a sharp groan. Like every muscle aches. "His name. Bee." Which doesn't surprise the hunter at fuck'n all. "Or- Bo. Boamiel. Don't call him Bee. Apparently only I can."

Dean has to chug whiskey like it's water in order to choke that tidbit of information down. The alcohol burns his split lip as he tilts his head back and sucks as much as he can down. "Heh. Bo. Like it's short for Bobby, but's actually a fancy-ass holy name." He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. "Either you and I get to be smartasses, or Sam came up with that." Heat floods his chest and stomach.

Cas cradles his head and grinds the palms of his hands into his eyes. "Probably the latter. Ugh. I feel… like I'm buzzing. Am I buzzing?" The fallen seraph looks at the man beside him. 

"Nah. You're still." Dean thinks Cas looks like a drunken sex-god. Sweaty and gorgeous and psychotic. Like a Greta Van Fleet music video. Dean feels really bad for thinking that. 

The ex-angel locks his gaze onto the already one-fourth gone bottle of whiskey. He lets out a low, wordless moan and reaches for it. Dean jerks it away and the ex-seraph's hand falls dangerously high on the hunter's thigh. "Dean. Share." Halfway between a whine and a command. 

The hunter smirks, praying his friend can't feel the way his leg muscles jump. "Nuh-uh. You're going to have one hell of a hangover anyway."

Cas pouts. "You're terrible at apologizing." His hand is still burning a patch against Dean's jeans. The ex-angel smells like stout beer and rain. Nothing that would be sold as cologne, but it's making the hunter hard anyway. Dean tries his best to berate himself for that: his best fried shouldn't be giving him a pants tent. This isn't how you're supposed to apologize. 

"Neither of us is going to remember this in the morning. And you're going to be pissed again. Still not sure why you aren't right now."

"Because I'm drunk and it's my fault anyway." Cas scoots closer until his chest is pressed against the Winchester's shoulder. He reaches. "Dean. Share."

Dean knows he's going to regret this so much in the morning. WikiHow never said anything about a good apology involving both parties being canned. He doesn't put up much of a fight- the booze is already making him feel weightless. 

When the fallen seraph gets his hands on the bottle, another fourth disappears in a single drag. Dean has to claw it back. "Woah. Hey, we don't need any more alcoholics around here. We've already got at least one." Some of the whiskey spills from Cas's lips and into his lap. He glares at it with flushed cheeks and hazy eyes. 

Dean tries to smother the tingles going up his side from their points of contact; he shouldn't crushing on Cas right now, that would be taking advantage of the poor guy, wouldn't it? But self-chastisement isn't really working too well, he thinks, how can it when his crush- future lover?- is flush against him and burning up like an over-microwaved hot pocket. 

Cas pokes the hunter right in the bruise beneath his eye. "You have applied your eyeliner wrong." He states. 

Dean tries not to laugh, because fuck, that's cute and he hates himself for thinking that. How much whiskey has he had now? It can't be that much, but half the bottle's already gone and he's feeling giddy and warm.

The fallen seraph lets out a bubbly giggle. And Dean knows this is getting dangerous, because the majority of his mind is starting to find a relationship with Castiel very appealing. And why shouldn't they do something: they're already slated to be together apparently. Who are they to deny Lady Destiny her games?

Certainly not Castiel, who isn't going to wait for Dean to make up his mind. A pair of hot, slick lips press against the bruise. Just enough so it throbs in the shape of Cas's mouth. The hunter's whole body flares with heat and his heart stutters to a stop. Fireworks go off somewhere when he feels the gentle flick of Cas's tongue over the purpled skin. 

And just as soon as it came, it's gone. The fallen seraph drops his head into the crook of Dean's neck. "James Novak had horrible tolerance." 

And he passes out. 

Dean knows that if he wasn't already, he's certainly going to Hell for this. He feels absolutely filthy for taking advantage of a drunken Cas like this. He knows he shouldn't do this, shouldn't feel like this about someone who barely even understands the concept of friendship, but he can't help it. Every time the hunter tries to pull away, he finds himself drawn back to his angel. 

Dean drinks the last half of the bottle in swift, numb gulps, pressing Cas securely to his chest. Some of the whiskey doesn't stay down, and he heaves the amber liquid back up into a puddle beside the couch before it even makes it to his stomach. 

They're both sweaty and gross. Cas is panting like he has to puke and Dean already did. The hunter settles back anyway, tucking his angel beneath his chin and drowning in his own guilt from it. 

They're both passed out when Sam comes to check on them thirty minutes later.


	12. Razor’s Edge

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sam’s babysitting services, Bo’s sheer panic, and Angel Radio shenanigans. 
> 
> Let the Sabriel begin. 
> 
> A Boamiel POV.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *ahem*  
> Your favorite disappointment (me) is back!
> 
> I’m not going to make up sob stories as to why I haven’t posted (short version: writers block. Long version: I’m just that lazy)
> 
> So anyway have fun. 
> 
> Leave suggestions in the comments as to where you might be interested in seeing this story go.

Boamiel James Winchester was born on a bleak November day, in a bed of Christmas Roses. 

During a battle. 

He was delivered rather unceremoniously by his agitated Uncle Sammy. Bo’s father was preoccupied with a den of vampires and couldn’t make it. 

But it doesn’t seem it would be worth attending anyway. If Bo were to design the event himself- as he likes to imagine when he gets bored- it would be spectacular. There would be thunder without lightning and Aurora Borealis painting the sky. There would be a great crack and the mountains would move. The ground would tremble and split and a new creature- one of a kind- would take its first shaky breaths and all across the world everyone and everything would stop to listen. Maybe some of them would even hear it. 

None of that had happened. Sam Winchester had carved into the distended stomach of his brother-in-law like it was a pumpkin. Sam Winchester had knelt in the Christmas Roses and pulled out a screaming baby. Wrapped the child in a swaddling flannel and laid him on white petals as Sam Winchester tried desperately to cauterize and stitch a gaping flap in Castiel’s stomach. 

Inhuman screaming in the distance, a newborn halfbreed wailing in the flowers, blood pearling on his skin. 

Bo has been rather cursed with the excellent memory gifted to all angels. Designed for recollecting the birth of the world millennia ago, thirteen years isn’t even a baby step. 

But Sam- this Sam- sits across from him in the kitchen and stares with round, brown eyes like he’s never seen such a wonder as Bo before. 

He hasn’t- the Nephilim has to remind himself almost constantly, and each time with a new, dull echo of a migraine. 

This Sam is a single Pringle and has had a nephew for less than seventy two hours and no future in sight. 

What a fucking trip. 

“You should put ice on that.” Bo breaks the silence. He watches his uncle’s hand flutter up to the swelling half moon of a bruise beneath his eye. 

Sam winces. “It’s fine.” He shrugs his huge shoulders. Bo wonders who exactly won the fight- he may be young but he isn’t stupid enough not recognize his father’s handprint. Even when it is wrapped in purple around someone’s throat. 

Thinking of his father is a bad idea right now though, Bo is barely keeping his head above the surface of a massive and potentially deadly breakdown. A single thought could send him spiraling. 

There’s another long silence. It’s tense, full of words that Bo keeps rolling around in his mouth like dice. They never make it over his tongue when he goes to speak them. He presses his palms together and squeezes them between his knees. 

They sit like that. A clock ticks. Bo feels the absence of Sam- his Sam, his Dad, his Baba, his life -like a hole in his chest. Seeing his parents-mess that they were- is certainly harder. But Bo isn’t going to think about that until he’s back at home, curled under a thick comforter in his bedroom, arms embracing a pillow like it’s another person. 

Pretending he isn’t just the loneliest little shit on the planet- in this year or another. 

Eventually, the hunter sighs, long and mirthless through his nose. He pushes up from the barstool and gathers the dishes on the island. He leaves Bo with a mess of gram cracker crumbs down his shirt and on the white marble in front of him. Half of the family sized box is already gone, and the Nephilim can’t remember eating any. 

He licks his teeth, tacky paste sealing his molars together. Apparently he’s hard wired to remember only traumatic events. 

“Where’s Baba and Dad? They fucking in the library?” Bo licks his finger and uses it to pick up the crumbs. First, he picks them up in the pattern of the Big Dipper. Then Orion. 

“I don’t know.” The dishes clang together like an orchestral ensemble as Sam does them by hand. Bo can hear the discomfort in his voice. It must have been the bluntness of the question. 

“Are you always this fucking tense around new people?” The Nephilim mutters. He begins to make Virgo. It’s not the same as tracing them through his window at night. There are no windows in the bunker. It’s starting to make him feel claustrophobic. 

Sometimes when his parents brought him down for various reasons, Bo would wonder what would happen if his powers went on the fritz (as they do sometimes) and he knocked a wall in. If he knocked the right wall, then the ceiling would collapse and they would be crushed. Or maybe everyone else would, but Bo wouldn’t- he’d be trapped in the library unable to get out. He’d be sealed in with nothing but his Dad’s emergency liquor stash to keep him alive. Until that ran out and then he starved or suffocated or shot himself with an angel killing bullet. Whichever came first really. 

“Heh. No, not usually. Can’t seem to find the right words for this I guess.”

“Pfft. Didn’t your fuck’n grandpa do this to you once?”

“He came from the past. There’s a big difference there.”

“Big fucking whoop.”

Bo waits for it. He sits patiently and carves out Pegasus from crumbs with an occasionally shaking hand. He waits for his uncle to flick him in the forehead:

‘can’t you make a sentence without using fuck’ 

‘you’ve been spending too much time with your Dad’. 

‘Join me in the library next time you can’t sleep and maybe some Mary Shelley will recalibrate your brain’

‘I will wash your mouth out with soap, don’t test me Boamiel James’

‘You’d better not be teaching your cousins any of that’

‘I’m going to be talking with your Dad about your manners, young man’

Russian roulette: spin the cylinder and see which response this weird, not-Uncle-Sammy comes up with. 

The answer is none. He doesn’t say anything. Bo makes Pieces out of the last crumbs. 

Suddenly, it’s very hard for the little Nephilim to breathe. Like when he fills up the bathtub in the upstairs washroom and sees how long he can hold his breath for. 

“What did you say your name was?” Sam asks. 

“Bo. Boamiel.” Bo’s mouth is dry. 

“Bo.”

“Yes.”

Sam wrings out his dish towel only to put it back in the water. “Well, Boamiel. I don’t know what your parents are doing right now. I don’t think that you really want to know either.”

“They’re drunk. I can smell it.” 

Bo can smell blood and that’s it. But Sam doesn’t know that. The hunter gives is nephew a calculating look like he knows the boy is full of shit. 

“Heh. Yeah, probably.”

Sam is trying to be warm and understanding. He’s doing the Thing where he creases his forehead and changes his tone to be light and soft -full of fleece blankets and engulfing hugs. 

It’s not helping. 

Bo feels to big for his skin. He feels like… he’s full. Which is not okay one bit because Bo is never full. He spends the majority of his time eating or thinking about what he’s going to eat next or looking for something to eat. And sometimes at night he presses on his stomach where he can feel it against his ribs- pushing back- and wonders what would happen if he were to take a knife, and make a little incision right there. He wonders if it would pop like a balloon or if it would split like a stuffed pepper and everything he’s ever eaten would spill out. 

Bo has far too much imagination for his own good. 

“I like future you better.”

He also lacks an appropriate brain-to-mouth filter. 

Sam looks mildly surprised. His eyebrows draw up. “Really?” He isn’t washing dishes anymore. He’s just standing there, his hands in the murky, frothy water up to his wrists. Probably spreading all sorts of blood-born pathogens from busted knuckles. 

“Yeah….” Bo reaches for the gram crackers. “He -you- are… different.” The Nephilim snorts at his own loss of words. They’re there, they just won’t come out properly. 

“Different… how so?” 

“You know what to say to me. You always know what to say.” Bo’s chewed fingernail stubs slip on the plastic of the crackers. “You- you’re happy. Happier at least.”

“Happier?”

“You’re- you’re not… right.” Which isn’t exactly what he means but it’s not far from the truth. “Your shoulders are too tense and the circles under your eyes are too dark. And you keep looking at me like- like I don’t fucking know- like you just don’t know what the hell to do.” 

He’s getting a headache.

“It’s- it’s wrong. It’s all wrong. I have the memories but you don’t. You’re fucking wearing my Uncle Sammy’s face but you’re not fucking him.”  
He gives up and goes to rip the package with his teeth. “This is honestly such a fucking trip. I want- I want-“

Bo can feel his breaths becoming shallow. Because his teeth can’t fucking catch on the right spot and just end up stretching the plastic. Because his hands have been shaking since this whole conversation started. Because he doesn’t belong here. He wants to go home. He just wants to go home-

Bo chucks the gram crackers across the kitchen. His hands dig into his hair, hooking onto his scalp. “My head hurts like a motherfucker.” He grits. 

“Hey, everything’s going to be fine. Just take a deep breath and-“

“Stop. Just… stop.” Bo’s fingers turn to claws and curl in his sandy hair. He must sound very desperate because his uncle snaps his jaws shut and watches with a slightly tortured expression. 

It takes a few minutes- it always does- for Boamiel to crawl out from underneath his crushing panic. He thinks of things that he likes: the stars, sugarplum tea, sleeping in on Saturday. He thinks of the other things that he likes, the less acceptable things: beating the shit out of a punching bag so he feels it for days after in his hands, playing Cards Against Humanity with his cousins, laying in the middle of the kitchen floor and smoking his Dad’s Marlboros. 

Bo has a sudden need to drown himself in Captain Morgan and astronomy books. 

Sam doesn’t say anything. But he gently leads his nephew into the main hall and lets him sit on top of the huge light table rather than in a chair. 

“So what kind of things do you like to do for fun, Bo?” He asks. He says the Nephilim’s name like it’s got a strange taste to it. 

“Lots of things.” Bo has given himself the beginnings of a migraine. A tight probing to his brain right behind the eyes. “I’m fixing an old motorbike with Dad right now. He says he’ll let me drive it once it’s in running condition again.”

“Oh yeah?” Sam looks vaguely amused. “What kind of bike?”

“87’ Harley Davidson lowrider. Right now all it does is spit out smoke.” Bo’s read all about accidents on motorcycles. He’d be 37 percent more likely to die while riding a motorcycle than driving a car. 

“Have any friends you hang out with?” It’s an awkward sort of question. To be honest, Bo’s trying his best not to look at his uncle right now, but he can hear the swish of Sam moving papers around on the table. 

Bo shrugs. “Not really. I mean, it’s not like you can send your little halfbreed to daycare.”

“I wouldn’t call you a halfbreed…”

“Why not? It’s what I am.” He doesn’t mean for it to come out as bitter as it sounds. 

“You have a very interesting concept of reality.” Sam says after a moment. 

“What an observation. Bravo.” Bo snips. He flops down onto the table. It’s warm against his back, soothing the pounding in his ears. He closes his eyes and tries not to think of everything that landed him here of all places- of all times. 

“I’m sorry. This is really, really weird for you, isn’t it?” Sam settles into a chair finally. 

Bo sniffs. “It’s weird for everyone. But I’d rather not talk about it. No chick-flick moments.”

“God, you’re just like Dean.”

Which makes Bo’s stomach curdle like spoiled milk for a hot second. He pushes an easy, practiced smile through. 

“So, Boamiel. What do you know about-“

Whatever Sam has to say is lost in a sudden white noise. 

It rings through the Nephilim’s temples, bouncing through his brain like pinball. Bo can feel his body twisting in response. 

It’s the kind of knife to the frontal lobe only Angel Radio can cause. 

When he was younger, Bo would imagine the frequency overpowering his delicate, human brain. He thought that the noise was most certainly drilling itself a maze of Swiss cheese holes in that gooey lump of nerves. 

It hasn’t yet, he doesn’t think. But he he has still refused to practice the techniques of reaching and grabbing sounds from another dimesion. 

Through the static and the white noise and the distant sound of wind whistling over a snowy landscape, he hears it. 

“-o? Bo? B-? Boa-iel?!”

Bo knows that voice. 

He’s heard it belting ‘Hamilton’ lyrics through the wall at four am. 

“Jude! Jude?”

A long drone of tv snow fills the silence. Bo can’t exactly feel what his body is doing right now -everything is distorted and murky- but he knows from experience that by now he’s probably writhing on the floor. Probably giving his uncle a heart attack. 

The Nephilim tries again. He reaches through the muted pain to pluck the right frequencies like harp strings. 

“Jude? Judea? Where are you?”

Fizzling, cracking noise doesn’t so much as reach Bo’s ears as it does climb under his skin with him. 

“-here am I? Wh- am I? Where -re -ou?” 

“Bunker. I’m in the bunker. Are you okay? Are Jack and Koa with you?” Bo tries to extend towards his two other cousins only to be jerked away from contact by both his inability and a sudden flare of pain. 

“-ack isn’t b- Koa is- don’t kno- -here are w- -hen a-e we, Bo-miel?”

“Past. We’re in the past. Just get to the bunker. Get to the bunker with Koa and we’ll figure this out.”

He’s slipping and he’s falling and the world is rushing back into him. The frequency slides through Bo’s grasp. 

Coming back into his body is like crashing a plane into the Dead Sea. It’s salty and cold. The corners of his mouth sting. A hoarse scream dries in his throat like an apple core. 

His muscles feel stretched and kneaded like bread dough. The beginnings of an ultimate Angel-Radio-hangover are pecking at his sinuses. 

Boamiel James Winchester is tired. He is so, so tired. The struggle to float in reality seems futile. 

He slips. 

And he falls. 

For the first time in a long time, he doesn’t dream.


End file.
